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...
Middle ear cleft cholesteatoma is an inflammatory disease that erodes local bony structures and can cause otorrhea, hearing loss, vertigo and intracranial complications. It is usually treated with surgery, typically canal wall up (CWU) or canal wall down (CWD) surgery....
Understand us; where do we begin? In this article the authors’ introduce a project that may uncover that our personalities and traits are a product of the interconnected wiring within our brain. The team discusses the Human Connectome Project and...
Neural plasticity refers to an ability of the brain and central nervous system to change their structure and function or their reorganisation in response to environmental cues, experience, learning, behaviour, injury and / or diseases and treatments. Neural plasticity is...
Direct application of medication into the ear is long established, going back as far as written records. In the modern era, greater understanding of aural anatomy revealed that drugs instilled in the middle ear could potentially diffuse into the cochlea...
In this article Vikranth Visvanathan describes an exciting development on the use of endoscopic technology in complex otological practice. Transcanal endoscopic ear surgery (TEES) is rapidly evolving as a recognised method of addressing middle ear and mastoid pathology. Since its...
Trying to remove foreign bodies from the ears and noses of children is something we have all struggled with at various times. Many people have their own top tips, and here Oliver McLaren and Alexander Walkden describe an ingenious way...
Introduction Congenital nasal pyriform aperture stenosis (CNPAS) is a rare cause of neonatal upper airway obstruction which was first described by Douglas in 1952 [1]. The first radiological description of CNPAS was described by Ey et al in 1988 [2]....
Cambodia is a country of 15 million people, still recovering from a chequered past. In the 1970s, under the Khmer Rouge, most of the medical profession, together with the rest of the educated population, was executed – the fortunate few...
Here, the authors provide some great tips for performing a successful microlaryngoscopy which should be of benefit to those learning this very common procedure. In this article, we will discuss tips for performing a microlaryngoscopy, and different laryngoscopes used to...
Septoplasty is a commonly performed procedure worldwide for nasal obstruction associated with a deviated nasal septum. In the UK, with long waiting lists for septoplasty, there is a large and unexplained variation in the incidence of this procedure between individual...
The vexed topic of reflux always generates much discussion, particularly when it comes to testing. We hear about a non-invasive assay that is gaining in popularity. Voice disorders impact around four percent of the UK population and can significantly hamper...