Journal Reviews
To question or not to question
Misophonia is a complex condition in which individuals experience a strong negative emotional response to specific sounds, such as chewing, breathing, swallowing or foot tapping. These reactions are not primarily determined by the volume of the sound. Although relatively few...
Transoral coblation surgery – a viable option for early laryngeal cancers involving the anterior commissure?
Transoral laser microsurgery is widely considered to represent the ideal treatment modality for early (T1a) laryngeal cancers. With disease involving the anterior commissure however, radiotherapy is often advocated on account of perceived superior voice and airway outcomes, plus potential difficulty...
How quality improvement helped to create local guidelines for good tracheostomy care
Significant morbidity and mortality is associated with tracheostomy insertion. A complex, multistep process exists to help patients towards decannulation. This process is often complicated by patient comorbidities, discontinuity of care and communication as patients move through hospital, and variable experience...
Predicting aspiration pneumonia in adults
Aspiration occurs when oropharyngeal or gastric contents are inhaled into the larynx and lower respiratory tract. When the aspirated material is colonised by pathogenic microorganisms, this may result in aspiration pneumonia. In contrast, aspiration of sterile gastric contents may lead...
For a better evaluation of neonatal hearing loss
The authors conducted a retrospective observational study on 112 neonates tested with auditory brainstem response (ABR) and auditory steady-state response (ASSR). The main aim was to compare hearing thresholds obtained by ASSR, ABR and behavioural audiometry at different frequencies and...
Large septal perforation repair
Repair of large nasal septal perforations (NSP) can be challenging due to limited availability of surrounding nasal tissue, mucosal tension and diminished vascularity. The authors of this manuscript included 38 studies involving 408 patients with large NSP, with aetiologies ranging...
Platelet-rich plasma-cartilage tympanoplasty
This systematic review and meta-analysis of five studies (n=234 patients) reports the effectiveness of type I tympanoplasty with cartilage and platelet-rich plasma (PRP) compared with type I cartilage tympanoplasty alone for closure of dry tympanic membrane perforations. This is an...
Environmental sounds matter too
Individuals with auditory neuropathy spectrum disorder (ANSD) frequently report major listening difficulties despite hearing thresholds that may not fully explain their functional impairment. Most audiological assessment batteries focus heavily on speech perception, yet this paper argues that environmental sound perception...
Quicker than reading the BNF
It has long struck me that it might be helpful to search medication-induced side effects by symptom, rather than having to look up each individual drug. For many years, there have also been regularly cited categories of medications to be...
Lip sensory disturbance in osteotomy patients
Neurosensory disturbance resulting from inferior alveolar nerve injury during a sagittal split osteotomy (BSSO) is a well-recognised complication. This paper from Türkiye looked at 20 patients with neurosensory disturbance >12 months after a bimaxillary osteotomy including a BSSO surgery and...
Nodal metastasis from thin tongue tumours
This is a retrospective study over the course of 7 years, in which 240 patients were assessed. All had excision of a T1/T2 tongue primary tumour with an elective neck dissection of level I–IV with or without reconstruction. Radiotherapy was...
Emergent surgical airway in head and neck conditions
This systematic review and meta-analysis looked at 1011 surgical airways in 14 studies. Of these airways, 50 were cricothyroidotomies. The mean complication rate was 16.8% with an airway-related mortality rate of 0.2%. They noted that the odds of complication significantly...
