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Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Tinnitus

I was sceptical when I read that Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Tinnitus was aimed at both clinicians and people with tinnitus. All too often, books intended for such a wide readership end up being too academic to appeal to patients...

Factors affecting hearing aid recommendations

There is a wide variety of hearing instruments available to the hearing impaired. Hearing care professionals are often confronted with making decisions on which to recommend based on audiometric and non-audiometric parameters (e.g. vision, manual dexterity and vanity). The factors...

A future for unilateral deafness

Every year, we see several patients struggling with irreversible unilateral hearing loss that is non-responsive to sound amplification. This article emphasises that clinicians should not underestimate the functional and psychological impairment single-sided deafness can have on an individual, even though...

Precautions to be taken in cosmetic facial surgery

In this comprehensive write-up on precautionary measures to be taken when doing cosmetic surgery on our patients, the authors begin by emphasising that facial plastic surgery is no longer limited to celebrities and the privileged. It has extended into everyday...

Peripheral nerve stimulation for chronic refractory pain

Peripheral nerve stimulation (PNS) plays an important role in treating chronic refractory pain syndromes that manifest in limited distributions and overlap with areas of neurologic innervation. The process is generally thought to capitalise on the inhibition and activation of pain-related...

Role of maxillary sinus irrigation as an adjuvant to current management of chronic rhinusitis without polyposis

Several decades have passed since irrigation of maxillary sinuses generally became a treatment of the past. A more recent concept of biofilms may have evoked new interest in this past procedure, fraught with its own issues. In this study, the...

What are the consequences of facial palsy on working life?

Facial palsy (FP) has multiple causes, including iatrogenic or idiopathic paralysis, trauma and tumours. Whilst for certain aetiologies, such as Bell’s palsy, recovery of function is expected, many patients will experience permanent symptoms due to incomplete recovery of the facial...

Globus, reflux or perhaps both?

We rarely do an ENT clinic without encountering a patient with persistent or recurring feeling of a lump or foreign body in the throat. We are also familiar with patients dreading to hear the C word after the endoscopic examination...

An otological cure for globus?

Globus pharyngeus is a common benign condition frequently encountered in ENT practice. Laryngopharyngeal reflux and psychological stressors are often considered to be contributory factors, but globus symptoms do not always respond to antacid medications. Such medications can also be limited...

‘What was I talking about?’ Memory and discourse in language impairment

This article discusses the function of the three theoretical components of working memory and their influence on discourse (the phonological assembly, the visuo-spatial sketchpad and the episodic buffer). The authors emphasise that the buffer is the key conceptual component responsible...

Swahili speech development in pre-school children

This study describes the speech development of 24 typically developing first language Swahili speaking children between the ages of three and five years 11 months in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and was motivated by the 2013 position paper drafted by...