A veteran doctor in Vietnam has strived hard to implement a cutting-edge surgical procedure at a lower cost compared to other countries, with the technique working miracles for many babies in preventing them from being deaf and mute.   Dr. Nguyen Thi Ngoc Dung, president of Pham Ngoc Thach Medical University in Ho Chi Minh City, recalled her efforts and resolve in putting cochlear implant surgery into practice at the Ho Chi Minh City Ear Nose Throat Hospital, where she acted as the director.

A cochlear implant is a small, complex electronic device that can help to provide a sense of hearing for a person who is deaf or severely hard-of-hearing.

The implant consists of an external portion that sits behind the ear and a second portion that is surgically placed under the skin, according to the website of the U.S. National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders.

“As head of the hospital’s Pediatrics Faculty previously, I witnessed many parents who were under the impression that their children are mute only. When they were told that the kids’ muteness results from their deafness, they were devastated and desperate for help,” Dr. Dung explained.

As the hospital’s director later, she and the hospital management board were single-minded on executing the entire process of cochlear implant surgery, including diagnosis, surgery and post-surgery speech therapy.

To date the hospital has remained the country’s pioneer and almost the only facility to regularly perform the surgical technique with merely Vietnamese surgeons.

Dr. Dung added that the hospital sent its staff to training courses right at the onset to make sure its specialists are able to perform the surgery entirely on their own.

“The number of operations has risen from a few in the first few years to nearly 30 in recent years, even after I left the hospital. Meanwhile, the surgery duration has been cut from three hours to one hour,” she noted.

The locally-performed surgical procedure is also cost-effective.

It costs US$15,000-30,000 in Vietnam compared to $30,000-60,000 when it is performed abroad. Having such an operation at home also saves child patients’ families considerable expenses in traveling and accommodation to have post-surgery examinations and readjustments.

Dr. Dung also made substantial efforts to obtain foreign assistance in training speech therapists in Vietnam, which was an unprecedented attempt.

She contacted Australian speech therapy specialists and co-founded the Trinh Foundation Australia, which has worked to assist Vietnamese people in establishing speech therapy as a profession.

The foundation organized two two-year speech therapist training courses in 2010 and 2012.

Thirty-six graduates from the two courses have since worked hard to pass on their acquired expertise and skills to their colleagues by holding training sessions and compiling literature, which has been integral to miracles in rehabilitating patients’ speech and swallowing functions.

The massive contributions made by Dr. Dung and the pioneering team of speech therapists have been highly regarded and disseminated at numerous seminars and in scientific reports.

The beneficiaries

Over two years ago, Thu Ha, a Ho Chi Minh City resident, was devastated to learn that her baby daughter was innately deaf in both ears.

The infant was unresponsive when her parents or grandmother called her, but her lack of response went unnoticed.

Ha did not take her baby girl to the Ear Nose Throat Hospital until she was nine months old.

“We could have sent her to Australia, where our relatives live, for a similar operation, but we were daunted by the long distance and considerable traveling after the surgery. So we decided on a cochlear implant operation in Vietnam,” Ha said.

The surgery’s result has proved their decision right.

Her baby, who is over three years old now, has grown up into an agile girl, who can listen well and talk non-stop.

V., another mother, was also confounded to see her 27-month-old baby fail to babble his first words.

She was overwhelmed to learn that her baby could not hear as other kids do.

V. then took her child to the Ear Nose Throat Hospital for the operation.

She and her husband burst into tears when their child mumbled his first sound later.