Bionic balance organs: progress in the development of vestibular prostheses.

The vestibular system is a sensory system that is critically important in humans for gaze and image stability as well as postural control. Patients with complete bilateral vestibular loss are severely disabled and experience a poor quality of life. There are very few effective treatment options for patients with no vestibular function. Over the last 10 years, rapid progress has been made in developing artificial 'vestibular implants' or 'prostheses', based on cochlear implant technology. As of 2017, 13 patients worldwide have received vestibular implants and the results are encouraging. Vestibular implants are now becoming part of an increasing effort to develop artificial, bionic sensory systems, and this paper provides a review of the progress in this area.