« Back to BNET.com — The go-to place for management.
  Advanced Search 
Find in




Content provided in partnership with
Thomson / Gale

FIND IN Advanced
Search

Limbaugh learning to listen again: Rush Limbaugh lost most of his hearing because of a rare disease, but the conservative icon says he has not lost his ability to communicate with his audience - Nation: Medical Breakthrough - Statistical Data Included

Insight on the News,  Jan 28, 2002  by Timothy W. Maier

Conservative radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh broke away from the noisy pleasures of his conservative political commentary in October to tell his 20 million listeners something about a subject on which he rarely talks seriously -- himself. "I lost hearing every five days, to the point that I'm now totally deaf in my left ear" this proud 50-year-old leader of the vast right-wing conspiracy revealed.

His right ear was not faring much better, Limbaugh revealed, leaving him almost totally deaf in that ear as well. He told listeners he did not begin to notice the loss until May 29. By July he could not understand lyrics to songs or follow a conversation. "Music was just a mass of noise," the former sports publicist and disc jockey told his radio listeners. "I was unable to hear it. I still don't know music. I haven't been able to recognize a song."

But that wasn't all. He no longer could hear enough to follow a TV broadcast or listen to the hugely popular radio Show he has done for the last 14 years. Now his voice was starting to go because he couldn't hear himself speak. "To describe for you the way I hear things now: I understand what I'm saying, but I think it's more because I know what I'm going to say rather than I'm actually hearing what I say," he acknowledged on one of his broadcasts.

Advertisement

The liberal media had a field day with Limbaugh's sudden loss of hearing. "The Mouth that roared has lost its ears," Time proclaimed. The ordeal did come with a certain irony for a man who loves to talk but has been accused of never hearing anything said to his left. Now he couldn't hear anything with his left ear. When critics claimed he sounded different, Limbaugh agreed, saying his voice sounded to him like a chimpanzee. It may have been the voice change that prompted him to go public with his hearing loss.

Limbaugh broke his silence on the heels of inking a recent contract with Premiere Radio Networks for a reported $31 million annually -- making him the highest-paid radio host in syndication history. Despite the hearing loss Premiere said it remained steadfast in believing that Limbaugh could continue with his show in its current format through 2009. "To me it was a nonevent" said Kraig T. Kitchin, president and chief operating officer of Premiere. "In the radio business, many broadcasters who have been on the air for 25 to 30 years use hearing aids. It's like watching a great basketball player who has a bandage around his knee."

But hearing aids eventually failed to work well enough for Limbaugh to understand speech as he continued to notice more hearing loss. He tried to see if he could hear the loudest sounds but says there was nothing. "I don't hear smoke alarms. You know how loud they are. I don't hear. I've tested the loudest things that I could find to see if I hear them, and I don't," he says.

Limbaugh's hearing loss occurred in the course of three months. The House Ear Clinic and Institute in Los Angeles diagnosed him with autoimmune inner-ear disease (AIED). It usually is treated with a combination of medications (the steroid prednisone and the anti-inflammatory etanercept) in an effort to save residual hearing.

AIED is an inflammatory condition of the inner ear. It occurs when the body's immune system attacks cells in the inner ear that are mistaken for a virus or bacteria. AIED is a rare disease, occurring in less than 1 percent of the 28 million Americans with hearing loss. It usually begins with a sudden loss of hearing in one ear, which progresses rapidly to the second. The loss progresses over weeks or even months.

In Limbaugh's case, the drugs failed to work for unknown reasons. He next proceeded with cochlear-implant surgery in his left ear on Dec. 19, 2001. The surgery consisted of implanting a series of electrodes into the cochlea, or inner ear, to replace the lost nerve cells. The implant itself consists of two components: the external unit and the implanted device. The external unit is composed of a tiny microphone that picks up environmental sounds and transmits them to a speech processor, where mechanical sounds are converted into a processed electrical signal. The signal is sent to the brain via the implanted electrodes and then to the hearing nerve.

The Food and Drug Administration first approved cochlear implants in 1985. There have been great advances in the last decade, moving from a single electrode to multiple electrodes in the cochlea and numerous processing strategies that have provided patients with greater ability to understand speech. The devices work 99.6 percent of the time they are implanted, but there are no guarantees the patient will be able to interpret the sound.

"I feel great," Limbaugh said in a statement a day after his operation. "The surgery went smoothly, and I'm looking forward to enjoying the holidays and returning to the air in early January."

Limbaugh's surgery at the House Ear Clinic "went very well" says Antonio de la Cruz, who implanted the talk-show host with the Clarion CII Bionic Ear. "As we expected, Mr. Limbaugh responded very well to the surgery, which lasted about two hours, and he was sent home. Rush has the approval of his physicians at the House Ear Clinic to return to work in early January."


1 -  2 -  3 -  4 -  Next