Search

2020 Lancet Commission on dementia: a call to action for integrated hearing healthcare

Dr Georgiou’s summary of the 2020 update to the 2017 Lancet Commission underscores the importance of medical and hearing healthcare professionals working together to tackle the modifiable risk factors that affect individuals throughout their lives, to help delay or even...

Churchill, Stephen Poliakoff’s dad and a KGB-bugged hearing aid

Winston Churchill was prime minister of the United Kingdom on two occasions: firstly from 1940 to 1945 and then from 1951 to 1955. He was famed for his acute wit, insight and leadership qualities that helped him navigate the British...

Guillotines from Joseph‑Ignace Guillotin to Greenfield Sluder

Joseph‑Ignace Guillotin. The politician and physician Joseph-Ignace Guillotin (1738-1814) was so disgusted by brutal head and shoulder injuries sustained in ‘failed attempts’ by drunken axe-wielding executioners during the French Revolution that he and surgeon Antoine Louis (1723-1792) advocated not only...

A soprano’s demise: a cautionary tale for the thyroid surgeon

Prior to the mid-19th century, thyroid surgery was considered excessively dangerous. The emergence of anaesthetic, antisepsis and improved instrumentation, however, increased its feasibility and frequency in Europe. The unhurried, judiciously antiseptic and haemostatic approach, advocated by Kocher, was popularised and...

Kallmann’s Syndrome

‘A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.’ (Shakespeare) Kallmann’s Syndrome (KS), or hereditary hypogonadal anosmia, is a rare genetic disorder characterised by delayed or absent puberty and anosmia. It is named after Franz Kallmann, but he was...

Endoscopic airway interventions in children

Open surgery for paediatric airway pathologies such as subglottic stenosis was hailed as revolutionary when many of today’s paediatric ORL specialists were in training. Equipment, facilities and training has moved on and the high-quality optics in modern endoscopes, coupled with...

Lights, camera, hearing: cinema as a catalyst for cochlear implant awareness

Cinema is reshaping how we see cochlear implants – raising awareness, sparking conversation and showing the power of representation. Cinema wields immense power in shaping societal perceptions and sparking dialogue around medical and social issues. In the realm of hearing...

Head and neck cancer and PET-CT

Positron emission tomography-computed tomography (PET-CT) is an imaging technique in which abnormalities of tissue metabolism are precisely superimposed onto the anatomy. It relies on the premise that malignant cells are more metabolically active compared with non-malignant cells. On this basis,...

Facial pain: the differential diagnosis in an ENT clinic

The patient presenting with facial pain can be a heartsink. Fear not – Bhaskar Ram and Sangeeta Maini are here with a succinct overview of the common non-sinogenic causes of facial pain and headache, and how to manage them. Facial...