Journal Reviews
An office procedure to close small tympanic membrane perforations
Various methods have been described for closure of small tympanic membrane perforations, ranging from paper patching to use of fibrin glue. The procedure needs to be non-invasive and cost effective. Use of Terdermis to close perforations of all sizes has...
Use of topical steroids and antibiotics, compared to systemic antibiotics in the treatment of acute rhinusinusitis
Acute rhinusinusitis is mainly initiated by viral infections. Bacterial infection is usually superadded. The inflammatory cascade upregulates the pro-inflammatory mediators resulting in pain, nasal obstruction and nasal discharge. Local application of steroids and antibiotics could provide a higher concentration of...
Voice therapy is an effective treatment for presbyphonia
The quality of an individual’s voice often declines with age. This deterioration occurs firstly as a result of vocal fold atrophy secondary to histologic alteration of the vocal fold mucosa as well as atrophy of the laryngeal musculature. Phonatory efficiency...
Gamma Knife surgery for persistent or recurrent trigeminal neuralgia
Treatment of trigeminal neuralgia continues to be challenging. The treatment options include pharmacotherapy, or failing this, surgical options like microvascular decompression (MVD), radiofrequency ablation, pencil beam convolution and Gamma Knife surgery. The authors of this article have presented a series...
Active intervention in small schwannomas associated with higher incidence of long-term hearing loss
This article represents collaborative data of hearing outcomes from tertiary centres in Norway and the United States. They studied data of patients with less than or equal to 3cm vestibular schwannoma who underwent observation, primary microsurgery and Gamma Knife surgery...
Surgery of vestibular schwannomas with peritumoral oedema
This is an interesting retrospective study evaluating peritumoral oedema on magnetic resonance images and correlating it with the intra-operative tumour characteristics and outcome. The study results found that vestibular schwannomas with peritumoral oedema were associated with greater incidence of hypervascularity...
Describing the most useful OSA assessment?
This article sets out to comprehensibly describe drug induced sleep endoscopy and its role in determining the level of obstruction in patients with OSA. The advantages described include the fact that other techniques, including Muller’s manoeuvre, have significant variation in...
Surgical options for children with OSA
This paper looks at the surgical management of OSA in children and approaches the method of patient selection initially. They discuss the role of polysomnography in that it is part of the AAOHNS criteria in those patients with OSA symptoms...
Is there a ‘best’ ventilation tube?
Studies on grommet materials and sizes are not exactly new but this was a well-designed randomized study in Sweden with some useful findings. The extrusion rate and complications associated with four different ventilation tubes (grommets) were assessed prospectively in 400...
Complication rates for grommet insertion in H&N cancer patients
Otitis Media (OM) can be the direct result of H&N malignancy itself or secondary to treatment of malignancy. Both surgery and radiotherapy can cause lasting changes to the physiologic function of the ET, middle ear, tympanic membrane and ear canal....
Cochlear implant electrode insertion technique
Atraumatic cochlear implant insertion techniques (so-called ‘soft surgery’) are now standard practice in most centres for all cases (no longer just for attempted hearing preservation cases). This has led to several studies examining cochlear trauma and electrode insertion force. In...
OTO-104 in noise-induced and cisplatin-induced hearing loss
These two animal studies report on potential new applications for intra-tympanic OTO-104, a slow-release hydrogel formulation of dexamethasone that is currently being used in a Europe-wide randomised trial for Ménière’s disease. In the first paper, guinea pigs were given a...
