Patients frequently present to the ENT department with breathing difficulties. The entity of ‘vocal cord dysfunction’ (also known as paradoxical vocal cord movement, inducible laryngeal obstruction, and many other names) is increasingly well recognised. Ravi Thevasagayam gives us an overview....
Competing against female Eastern Bloc athletes in the 1980s was a thankless task, demanding a mulish tenacity in an often futile cause. Ideal preparation for a career in surgery? My path to medicine was unusual, in that I left school...
As being an anterior skull base surgeon becomes the aspiration of many ENT trainees, Professor Nicolai gives his personal insights into the future for this exciting subspeciality. Having been directly involved in the evolution of transnasal endscopic surgery (TES) since...
Your own voice clinic may be filled with teachers, elderly clergy and badly trained pub singers, but it wasn’t always like this... When I was first invited to write an article about opera and ENT for this edition of ENT...
Some patients would like to alter the appearance of their nose without surgery or make further subtle changes after a rhinoplasty. Lydia Badia explains how this can be done, thanks to the advent of injectable fillers. This medical procedure in...
Adel Hutchinson is one of those calm and controlled anaesthetists for whom nothing seems too difficult. In this article, she describes the key perioperative factors for one of the highest complexity operations in ENT; free-flap surgery. It makes good reading...
The ‘shared airway’ relationship between ENT surgeons and anaesthetists is well documented. But ENT surgery and anaesthesia interact in numerous other ways, particularly in complex skull base surgery. What do our anaesthetic colleagues want us to know about vestibular schwannoma...
As the National Centre for Airway Reconstruction, the Charing Cross laryngology MDT provides expert care to patients with airway problems as well as voice and swallowing disorders. In this article, the team explain their raison d’etre and why the MDT...
When The Chocolate Line in Bruges, Belgium, was approached by the charity, Shout at Cancer, there was always going to be something very special and innovative in the pipeline! Shout at Cancer’s Thomas Moors has been chatting with Julius Persoone,...
We learn much of our future by looking at our past; Douglas MacMillan provides us with a fascinating glimpse into his years as a junior doctor. The operating theatre was a somewhat alien environment in the late 1960s: theatre sisters...
In the “Just-so Stories”, the accomplished wordsmith Rudyard Kipling details how the leopard got his spots. Which concludes that the leopard will never change his appearance again as he is quite content just the way he is. The former degree...
Can human factor issues be better addressed within a multidisciplinary learning environment? Would this improve team working and patient outcomes? Are these important training considerations? Mona Thornton discusses the experience of a multidisciplinary simulation airway workshop in the unit she...