Professor Henryk Skarżyński — initiated the treatment of total deafness in 1992 and partial deafness since 2002, by implanting patients with a cochlear implant. Founder of the World Hearing Center — an institution with no equivalent outside Poland.
Skarżyński’s Method of Partial Deafness treatment – Polish school of oto-surgery in world science.
Partial Deafness Treatment (PDT) is a programme developed by Professor Henryk Skarżyński and dedicated to patients who cannot hear middle and high-frequency sounds, or most of whose sensory cells have been damaged, which hampers their communication with the environment. Efficient communication is fundamental to the development of modern societies. The proportion of people with hearing disabilities is increasing, especially in ageing societies. Skarżyński’s PDT method is a chance for millions of people to live a normal life.
The phenomenon of Skarzyński’s PDT method consists in complementing the preserved remains of natural hearing with so-called electric hearing, which is created after the proper implantation of the cochlear implant system.
Patients who received only a few to a dozen or so percent of sound information after the treatment have hearing that allows them to communicate freely with others, talk on the phone, enjoy listening to music and even develop artistic passions such as playing various instruments, singing or composing music. Some can even match professional musicians, as can be seen, for example, during the International Music Festival for Children, Youth and Adults with Hearing Disorders “Beats of Cochlea” which has been organised for five years on the initiative of Professor Skarżyński.
Prof. Skarżyński carried out the world’s first electric hearing supplementation in an adult PDT patient in 2002, and in a child in 2004.
The „Polish school of oto-surgery” has gained recognition in the world science and medicine, because we had strong arguments — says Prof. Skarżyński. — “Our papers presented at world and continental congresses and published results of patients operated following my method leave no doubt that it is the least invasive one. I have performed over 200,000 operations in my professional life. In order to popularise the greatest achievements, I had to take the risk of performing them with a live broadcast in Poland and in several countries on three continents,” adds Professor Skarżyński.
Together with 46 scientists from all continents, Professor Skarżyński developed the world’s first scale for assessing treatment results, and later, in 2007, he initiated the world’s largest series of international Window Approach Workshops (WAW). During the 49th edition of WAW, he performed more than a thousand live surgery demonstrations at the World Hearing Centre, which were observed by more than 4 thousand specialists from all continents. The scientific output of the „Polish School of Otosurgery” includes almost 3 thousand publications and scientific reports.