TAMPA, Fla — The day after Gabriel Al Saylami was born, he failed his newborn hearing screening. That was a little over a year ago.
He was almost completely unable to hear, meaning learning how to read, write or speak was going to be almost impossible.
WATCH: FDA lowers infant cochlear implant age as infants across Tampa Bay area receive care
"So from the beginning, it really felt like he was missing out on something, and we've really tried to not think of it that way cause that's not true," Courtney Joseph said.
After trying hearing aids for a few months, his parents, Courtney Joseph and Elia Al Saylami, made the decision for Gabe to get cochlear implants at 13 months old.
Now, just two months later, Gabe and his parents have hit the ground running.
"Like once the emotions died down, and we were at home, and I would put the vacuum on and start vacuuming the floor, or a door would slam, or the dog would bark, and seeing him start reacting to these things, that was where the real, like, lasting happiness," Joseph said.
"That's indescribable," Joseph said.
A change at the federal level, with the FDA lowering the maximum age for infants from nine months to seven months for certain cochlear implants, could make cases like Gabe's even more common.
Dr. Loren Bartels, who is an otologist, neurotologist, skull base surgeon with the Tampa General Hospital's Ear, Nose & Throat Institute has been working with cochlear implants at TGH for over 40 years. He tells me the change will make it easier for families and kids like Gabe to get the care they need.
"If you do cochlear implants in very young children, by age three, their receptive language ability is near normal, and by age four, their expressive language ability is near normal," Bartels said.
Dr. Bartels is also a clinical professor of otolaryngology at USF's college of medicine. He says he'd like to see the age go down even lower to about four to five months because he thinks that'll help more and more kids have a normal life.
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