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Choosing Wisely!
This article focuses on the prickly topic of healthcare costs and specifically on reducing spending on neuroimaging for headaches. Epidemiological studies indicate that the prevalence of lifetime headaches is 93 to 99% and accounts for 1.5% of all primary care...
Hearing aid standards and test systems
Hearing aids are the most used management / rehabilitation option for people with hearing loss. Generally, hearing instrument manufacturers perform the hearing aid performance measurements and provide its specification in terms of functionality. However, it is also common for government...
Postoperative complications in OSA patients
This well researched meta-analysis describes the various complications obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) patients may acquire after surgery. These American reviewers found that OSA patients after non-upper airway operations, were more like to suffer (compared to non-OSA patients), from the following...
Passive smoking and rhinosinusitis
One would expect that subjects exposed to more passive smoke would have a significantly increased level of rhinosinusitis. This study looked at a reasonable number of sinusitis and control subjects (404 and 165) using hair nicotine as an assessment of...
Improving smell outcomes after sinus surgery: impregnated dressings?
There is much we can do to improve the airway of patients with chronic sinus disease, especially those with polyps. However, the olfactory outcomes are usually disappointing and patients miss this important sensory modality, which has an effect on their...
What do we put in our nasal douches? Anything?
The rise of the popularity of saline nasal douches, with several commercial preparations available, may be a rediscovery of an age-old tradition, but it has been shown to benefit patients. The question then arises as to whether this can be...
A novel way to reduce postoperative nausea and vomiting
This is an interesting RCT which evaluates the prophylactic effect of bilateral endoscopic injection of local anaesthetic in the sphenopalatine ganglion (SPG) on postoperative nausea and vomiting (PONV). It has a robust design, and is sufficiently powered and blinded, with...
Balloons – more complicated than first thought?
This study describes the complications seen after balloon sinuplasty (BSP) - a commonly performed procedure (particularly in the USA where it is often performed as an office procedure) versus traditional functional endoscopic sinus surgery (FESS). The data source was a...
Daflon – a new way to treat idiopathic epistaxis
Epistaxis is a common ENT emergency and most cases are idiopathic. Flavonoids are natural substances with variable phenolic structures that are found in fruit and vegetables and take effect on blood vessels. Daflon is proposed to control epistaxis by “improving...
Surviving oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma – does subsite matter?
Human papilloma virus (HPV) status is a known prognostic factor in oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (OPSCC). The eighth edition of American Joint Cancer Committee (AJCC) has modified the TNM staging to reflect this. However, subsite as an independent prognostic factor...
Sinus implants to treat recalcitrant polyps
It is well established that the burden of chronic rhinosinusitis on healthcare costs and patients’ quality of life is high, and that current mainstream treatment options of oral or topical steroids are not without problems. This paper compares two RCTSs...
