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Building sound: from Stonehenge to a Symphony Hall

Modern architecture can use scientific techniques to shape room acoustics and create great sounding places. Professor Trevor Cox discusses our ancestors’ understanding of the importance of building techniques to enhance acoustics from Stonehenge to a Symphony Hall. Going to an...

Protheses for patients with severe bilateral vestibular loss

In February 2003, I met a patient with severe bilateral vestibular loss due to gentamicin toxicity, and I felt disheartened. Despite the fantastic diagnostic vestibular lab we had at Maastricht University Hospital, what could I truly offer her? She had...

Have we reached our limits in endoscopic skull base surgery?

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...

The Airway Intervention Registry: Recurrent Respiratory Papillomatosis (AIR: RRP) data collection

Laryngeal papillomatosis remains a frustratingly difficult condition to treat. Adam Donne and Steven Powell tells us about a collaborative project aiming to enhance patient care. The first UK Recurrent Respiratory Papillomatosis registry opened in April 2018 through the AIR (Airway...

Doctors’ health and wellbeing: depression in surgeons

Dr Clare Gerada and Richard Jones work for the Practitioner Health Programme (PHP), a specialist service for doctors and dentists in the London area with mental health / addiction problems (www.php.nhs.uk). Here they discuss some of their preliminary findings (specific...

Comparing AutoREM accuracy to NAL-NL2 targets: real patient data and simulator verification

A new study examines how accurately AutoREMs from four major brands hit NAL-NL2 targets, revealing strengths, limits and clinical implications. Automatic real ear measurements (AutoREMs) have emerged as a promising way to make hearing aid fittings faster and more consistent....

The importance of hearing aid validation in infants with hearing loss

Hearing aid validation requires that speech discrimination be measured, yet there are no validated methods of measuring speech discrimination in infants and toddlers. Prof Uhler describes two related approaches that are showing promise. Speech discrimination is the gold standard for...

Direct-to-consumer hearing devices: a need to combine cosmetic appeal with device capabilities

How safe and desirable are direct-to-consumer amplification devices? A team has put a range of devices through their paces and compared them to a standard NHS hearing device. Why do most individuals who would benefit from hearing aids not try...

Cartilage conduction hearing aids: the third pathway for sound transmission and its application

Air-conduction and bone-conduction are familiar terms; now enter ‘cartilage conduction’. This new term offers a novel approach sound transmission. Hiroshi Hosoi explains the concept and proposes some future applications. The new sound pathway ‘cartilage conduction’ can provide various types of...

Alternobaric vertigo: asymmetrical vestibular function due to asymmetrical middle ear pressures (Iron Man’s archenemy)

The Marvel Cinematic Universe could certainly be deemed an ‘extreme environment’ and yet very rarely do we see the Avenger’s popping to the clinic for a check-up. Hee-Young Kim has wondered how they cope with extreme pressure changes and discusses...

Hearables: in-ear sensing devices for recording of physiological signals

Colver Ken Howe Ne, Jameel Muzaffar and Manohar Bance discuss the potential of hearable systems to monitor physiological signals (e.g. from brain or heart, blood pressure, body temperature) unobtrusively. Such adaptations require high-quality sensors and sophisticated de-noising signal processing on...