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How the world sees facial palsy patients

This paper from Australia gives an insightful perspective on the impact of facial paralysis on patients, and may explain the well-documented poor quality of life scores in this patient group, particularly those ‘successfully reconstructed’ with surgery. It explores how the...

The microbiological environment of the paranasal sinuses

This article reviews the ecology of the sinuses and tries to make sense of the confusing literature on the subject. This covers the details of molecular studies, particularly those which attempt to differentiate normal sinuses from those in patients with...

A review of DISE classification systems

This article looks at the wide variety of classification systems currently available for interpreting drug induced sleep endoscopy (DISE).The fact that there are so many classification systems, suggests that there is: A) a lot of disagreement about how DISE should...

3D printed temporal bones for drilling are here!

It was only a matter of time before the 3D printer was used to help us with simulated temporal bone (TB) drilling. This group printed three paediatric TB models and evaluated their quality. They were found to be of ‘high...

Back to basics: nasendoscopy beats CT, again!

There are few otolaryngologists (or patients) who have not been confronted with a computed tomography scan referring to a deviated septum. In a very similar way to the accidental findings of sinus mucosal thickening, the clinician is left in a...

Coupler microvascular anastomoses: how good?

This paper is written by a group of reconstructive surgeons and a school of computing. The study used computational fluid dynamics to model blood flow through idealised sutured and coupled vessels, to investigate if differing anastomotic techniques affect intravascular blood...

Early intensive aphasia therapy in stroke patients

The impact of aphasia following stroke is devastating. Very early aphasia rehabilitation studies have been the subject of ongoing debate. This paper describes the comparison of a very early aphasia therapy regimen with a historical ‘usual care’ control group after...

Centralisation of care for acoustic tumour surgeries?

Several factors are responsible for readmission after acoustic tumour removal. The authors retrospectively studied the association between hospital, patient and insurance factors with the rate of readmission following acoustic tumour removal in the United States using the Nationwide Readmission Database...

Neurological complications associated with managing degenerative cervical myelopathy

Degenerative cervical myelopathy (DCM) is a common neuropathologic status due to degenerative changes to the cervical spine. There are multiple operative techniques available, including anterior cervical discectomy and fusion, anterior cervical corpectomy, laminoplasty, laminectomy and laminectomy with fusion. C5 palsy...

Management of patients with advanced otosclerosis

This paper discusses the management options of advanced otosclerosis. There are several definitions for advanced otosclerosis in the literature but, more recently, the diagnosis of advanced otoscletosis has been reserved for patients who have less than 30% aided speech discrimination...