While there, Sen. Hagan met Grayson Clamp, a 3-year-old boy from Charlotte, N.C. who is able to hear now after receiving an auditory brainstem implant at UNC as part of an FDA-approved investigational trial. A video showing Grayson hearing his father’s voice for the first time has garnered more than 1 million views on YouTube.
Monday, August 26, 2013
On Friday, Aug. 23, Sen. Kay Hagan toured the Carolyn J. Brown Center for the Acquisition of Spoken language Through Listening Enrichment (CASTLE) facility at the Woodcroft Professional Complex in Durham, N.C.
While she was there, Sen. Hagan met the family of Grayson Clamp, a 3-year-old boy from Charlotte, N.C. who was born deaf but is now able to hear after receiving an auditory brainstem implant at UNC Hospitals as part of an FDA-approved investigational trial. A video showing Grayson hearing his father’s voice for the first time has garnered more than 1.2 million views on YouTube. She also met the two UNC physicians who performed Grayson’s surgery, Dr. Craig Buchman and Dr. Matthew Ewend.
“The hard work and perseverance of Len and Nicole Clamp, Dr. Buchman and his team at CASTLE changed Grayson’s life and made him an inspiration to us all,” Sen. Hagan said in a press release about her visit. “The incredible progress we have made in cochlear implant technology over the last decade has been partly the result of investment our government has made in research through NIH funding. Grayson is a real life example of how these research investments pay dividends in the long-term, and I am committed to making sure that these smart investments in our future do not become the victims of sequestration and partisan gridlock.”
News media outlets that covered the visit included The Associated Press, WRAL, News 14 Carolina and The Herald-Sun.
The Carolyn J. Brown Center for the Aquisition of Spoken language Through Listening Enrichment (CASTLE) is funded through a private/public partnership and is an expansion of the W. Paul Biggers, MD Carolina Children’s Communicative Disorders Program (CCCDP). The CCCDP is funded by the state of North Carolina and offers financial assistance to families for hearing aids, FM systems and cochlear implant technology. CASTLE, as part of the CCCDP, works through the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Department of Otolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery, to provide comprehensive services to children who are deaf or hard of hearing. The CCCDP/CASTLE office is located in the Woodcroft Professional Complex in Durham.