Kitty Grutzmacher had contended with poor hearing for a decade, but the problem had worsened over the past year. Even with her hearing aids, “there was little or no sound,” she said. “I was avoiding going out in groups. I stopped playing cards, stopped going to Bible study, even going to church.” Her audiologist was unable to offer Grutzmacher, a retired nurse in Elgin, Illinois, a solution. But she found her way to the cochlear implant program at Northwestern University. There, Krystine Mullins, an audiologist who assesses patients’ hearing and counsels them about their...

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