“…Compared with other animal models, cochlear implantation in the rat is considered surgically difficult, and while there are a number of acute studies in this species (Nagase et al, 2000;Wu et al, 2003;Hsu et al, 2001;Vischer et al, 1997;Paolini and Clark, 1998;Shepherd et al, 2004), there has been no chronic cochlear implantation reported. The reasons for this difficulty includes: i) relatively smaller size of the rat cochlea; ii) the difficulty in developing such a small multiple channel scala tympani electrode array; and iii) the presence of the stapedial or pterygopalatine artery (SA), located in the middle ear cavity (Govaerts et al, 1993;Judkins and Li, 1997;Praetorius et al, 2001;Pinilla et al, 2001;Yamamoto et al, 2003), severely reducing surgical access to the scala tympani.…”