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Who finds it hard to swallow?

Early identification of dysphagia in inpatients on acute stroke wards has been recommended as best practice guidelines in many countries. However, several institutions fail to use formal dysphagia screening protocols and rely on informal detection by nurses and doctors. This...

Listening effort and speech perception performance

Capturing speech perception performance in noisy listening environments is a key part in validating any hearing instrument. Traditionally audiologists have always measured this performance in noisy environments by looking at thresholds, i.e. speech reception thresholds or signal to noise ratios....

Intratympanic steroids - to give or not to give?

The treatment of idiopathic sudden sensorineural hearing loss (ISSNHL) is controversial and different modes of steroids have been tried without any universal consensus. Various authors have reported combined oral and intratympanic steroid therapy in SSNHL, with consistent results in several...

Updates on current evidence for biologics in chronic rhinosinusitis

For a comparatively short piece, this article manages to pack in a lot of important information about a complex emerging area of rhinology – immunologically targeted therapy (biologics). Immunologically targeted therapy is a rapidly progressing and expanding domain which is...

Enhanced recovery following surgery for head and neck cancer – the current evidence

Enhanced recovery after surgery (ERAS) programmes are now well established in many surgical specialities as a means of reducing postoperative complications and length of stay in hospital. Whilst many head and neck teams have interventions used to aid postoperative recovery,...

Satisfaction levels in elderly patients with cochlear implants

Hearing rehabilitation in the elderly is of utmost importance as it is associated with depression and dementia in this age group. Cochlear implantation is indicated for hearing-impaired individuals who do not derive adequate benefit from conventional hearing aids. In this...

Do personal listening devices cause cochlear synaptopathy?

Cochlear synaptopathy is a condition in which noise interrupts the synaptic communication between sensory inner hair cells and low spontaneous rate cochlear nerve fibres. Since these nerve fibres are associated with signal coding in noisy backgrounds, their disruption leads to...

Prognostic value of vascular ultrasonographic findings in patients with idiopathic sudden sensorineural hearing loss

Sudden sensorineural hearing loss is often idiopathic. Although the aetiology of idiopathic sudden sensorineural hearing loss (ISSNHL) is unclear, vascular compromise is one of the frequently proposed hypotheses to explain its pathophysiology. Existing studies have shown an association between ISSNHL...

Treatment options for vestibular neuritis: systematic review and meta-analysis

Vestibular neuritis (VN) is the third most common cause of peripheral vertigo. VN has been postulated to have viral aetiology and historically it was treated with steroids, until 2011 when a Cochrane review demonstrated lack of robust evidence behind this...

Pharmacological treatment of glue ear in children

Otitis media with effusion (OME), also known as glue ear, is a common cause of hearing loss in children. Most cases resolve spontaneously within three months. Early and proper management of OME can help avoid hearing and speech impairment that...

Is a hemithyroidectomy as effective as a total thyroidectomy for compressive symptoms?

The claim made in the title of this paper, that hemithyroidectomy is equally as successful as total thyroidectomy in alleviating compressive symptoms from goitres, is certainly intriguing. And with the inclusion of 45,539 subjects, it would at first glance seem...