Technical tips: the eyes and ears of artifacts in diagnostic testing

Recognizing and eliminating artifacts are a daily part of my job as a neurodiagnostic technologist. Distinguishing between EEG and artifact is essential since it can impact the patient's diagnosis and treatment. I recently experienced an interesting situation that I had never previously encountered. My patient had a cochlear implant. This small device presented a challenge, but gave me the opportunity to put my troubleshooting skills to the test, and use some quick thinking to remove the artifact it created from the recording. It turns out this small device not only affected the EEG recording, but also another diagnostic test. I decided to do some research on the cochlear implant to find out how this tiny instrument affected the EEG recording as well as my patient's life, by allowing my patient to hear the world around him.