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100th Baha operation in North Wales
Iris Ganderton, a 60-year-old housewife from Anglesey, won herself a place in the history books when she recently became the 100th person to benefit from a bone conduction hearing implant at the Wrexham Maelor Hospital in North Wales. A bone conduction hearing implant, commonly known as a Baha, is a special type of surgically implanted hearing device which is used to treat conditions where the middle ear is not functioning properly - leading to conductive hearing loss - or for patients with single sided deafness. The Baha device was pioneered in 1970s and the Wrexham Maelor Hospital's first patient to receive one was fifty-two year old Wendy Williams, who had her operation on 17th December 1997. The Wrexham Maelor is the only hospital in North Wales to perform Baha operations and patients belonging to all three of the NHS Trusts in North Wales - North East Wales, Conwy & Denbighshire, North West Wales - come to Wrexham from all over North Wales as far as Anglesey and the end of the LLeyn peninsula. Patients from the Powys Local Health Board in Mid Wales are also referred to Wrexham for Bahas. In fact, the hospital has become such a centre of excellence for Baha operations on both adults and children that the surgeon, Mr David Snow, along with audiologist Jon Longshaw and nurse practitioner Linda Griffiths are in the process of establishing an online forum for Baha professionals from all over the UK, and hopefully Europe too, to discuss the latest developments in both surgery and aftercare. Mr Snow says "I am delighted to be celebrating the 100th Baha operation at the Wrexham Maelor Hospital and I would like to congratulate all the staff and patients who have contributed to achieving this milestone. However, in my line of business, it is important to keep looking forwards. Hopefully we will be celebrating the 200th before another ten years is out!" Iris' story 60-year-old Iris, a housewife from Anglesey, was deafened by measles as a baby. Throughout her childhood, Iris tried wearing hearing aids, although they caused frequent infections. When she was at school Iris had to go to the school clinic every other day to have her ears cleaned out so she missed a lot of school time and her studies suffered. After a particularly bad infection that went to her chest, Iris was put on five different sorts of antibiotics and had to take her hearing aids out for good. Before then Iris had a lot of 'get up and go' but being unable to hear made her miserable. Her husband and sons could not understand what she was going through and, stuck at home all day, Iris began to get very depressed. The staff at the Wrexham Maelor Hospital were really good and talked her through the operation so that she wasn't worried about it when she went into surgery last Autumn. Iris' Baha operation went smoothly and her small scar is healing up beautifully. The external sound processor was switched on on 1st December 2006 and, since then, Iris has not looked back and she says it's "absolutely brilliant". Since Iris no longer needs hearing aids in her ears, they stay dry and free of infection and being able to listen to the radio has made her home life much more interesting. This Christmas Iris even went to a party and found that she could hear too much noise for a change!
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