Cochlear Implant Surgeries can result in death?

Answer 1

Highly rare. I know for a fact that in China, out of ~3500 cochlear implant surgeries to-date, the death rate is 0. This was presented in a conference I attended recently. I don't know about other countries, but really, I have never heard of death due to cochlear implant surgery.

The actual surgical procedure takes 3~5 hours and uses general anesthesia. The surgeon cuts a piece of skin-flap open, drills a 3~4mm bed in the temporal bone (the skull bone that contains part of the ear canal, the middle ear, and the inner ear), puts the implant body in the bed, then drills a small hole in the cochlea, and inserts the electrode array into the cochlea. The implant is then secured and the skin-flap covered back and stitched back.

Answer 2

It's rare, but any time a person has surgery they run the risk of dying from an infection or the anesthesia. However, cochlear implants aren't necessarily a high risk surgery, so I think the chance is pretty slim.