Addendum to the history ofcochlear implants in Brazil

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I would like to congratulate BJORL for the excellent edi-torial published in issue 81, number 2, by Prof. Dr. PedroMangabeira Albernaz on the history of cochlear implants inBrazil.1Professor Pedro Mangabeira was the pioneer in this tech-nique in our country, having been honored at the lastIbero-American Congress of Cochlear Implants.It so happens that in the Editorial, I do not know whetherdue to lack of space, something of extreme historical impor-tance was omitted: the initiative, in 1990, to manufacture inBrazil the first national cochlear implant, developed entirelyin the Bioengineering Department of Instituto do Corac¸ão(the Heart Institute) of HCFMUSP, with the cooperation ofthe FMUSP Otorhinolaryngology Discipline, which won anaward at the time from the Inter-American DevelopmentBank as the best scientific project of 1989. The first workabout it was published in this respected journal, the Brazil-ian Journal of Otorhinolaryngology.2Two patents were generated based on these works andseveral patients were successfully implanted (Patent INPIno. 910.5546-6; on 12/16/1991).3Please cite this article as: Bento RF. Addendum to the history ofcochlear implants in Brazil. Braz J Otorhinolaryngol. 2015;81:576.The researchers involved in this project were Ricardo Fer-reira Bento, Aroldo Miniti, Adolpho Leiner, Carlos AlbertoNunes, Milton Oshiro, Maria Valéria Goffi Gomes.Only five countries have developed cochlear implantdevices, including Brazil with this device. The latter is citedin more than 1000 publications on CI around the world as apioneer in its concepts.