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Sniffing out the evidence – COVID-19 and loss of sense of smell and taste

Louis Pasteur once observed: “In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind.” Professor Hopkins was certainly prepared when a few anecdotes of smell problems started to accumulate early in the pandemic’s course. Post-viral olfactory loss is nothing...

Combined use of a hearing aid and a cochlear implant: a case study

When multi-channel cochlear implants (CIs) were first introduced in the 1980s, their use was restricted to people who derived no benefit from conventional amplification. Over the past three decades, however, the criteria for CIs has been relaxed considerably, and it...

Ossicular reconstruction

Ossicular reconstruction often yields disappointing results, even for the most experienced and skilled of otologists. John Dornhoffer and David Walker explain that the most important determinant of outcome is the patient’s middle ear environment, and offer some valuable words of...

The use of social media to drive practice growth

Cliff Olson is the most successful user of social media in the hearing care industry as of the date of this publication. His videos have been viewed worldwide, and he has more YouTube followers than all the major hearing aid...

New hearing healthcare service-delivery models with connected technologies

Connected hearing healthcare can improve access to affordable hearing healthcare. DeWet Swanepoel discuss how innovative trends in connectivity and technology offer opportunities for novel and decentralised models of delivering high-quality hearing healthcare. Megatrends in connectivity and technology have ushered in...

Cognition and hearing – you can’t test one with the other!

Cognitive Psychologist, Boaz M Ben-David, provides insights into the import of considering cognitive factors when assessing speech perception ability to maximise intervention success. Failing to do so, he suggests, is “ageist”, a predisposition healthcare professionals must avoid. Cognitive performance is...

Andrew Foster and deaf education

This article examines the career of deaf African American, Andrew Foster, and his contribution to deaf education in Sub-Saharan Africa. The history of medicine has often been guilty of attributing great revolutions to a single person (usually a white man)...

Music and cochlear implants

Introduction The introduction of multichannel cochlear implants (CIs) in the early 1980s provided children and adults with severe and profound hearing losses with greatly improved speech perception skills. In this paper, however, I am going to focus on an area...

Understanding new and emerging categories of hearing devices

The hearing device landscape is rapidly changing, and what should be given, to whom, and why, are questions that many hearing healthcare professionals are asking. Brent Edwards discusses these questions and how consumer characteristics may influence their choice. In 2016,...

Congenital cytomegalovirus causing deafness in children: an update

Congenital CMV is the leading non-genetic cause of sensorineural hearing loss in children. Keith Trimble draws our attention to this and gives a comprehensive guide on diagnosis and treatment. Congenital cytomegalovirus (cCMV) infection is common, affecting 1% of all newborns,...

Whale hearing tests through evoked potential audiometry

Covering over 70% of the earth’s surface and reaching known depths of 11km, the world’s oceans tick the box for an extreme environment. What do we know of the impact of environmental noise on the deep-sea dwellers of this habitat?...

Thoughts on war: von Clausewitz revisited

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile, This day shall gentle his condition: And gentlemen in England now a-bed Shall...