Search

Active intervention in small schwannomas associated with higher incidence of long-term hearing loss

This article represents collaborative data of hearing outcomes from tertiary centres in Norway and the United States. They studied data of patients with less than or equal to 3cm vestibular schwannoma who underwent observation, primary microsurgery and Gamma Knife surgery...

Stimulation for a good night’s sleep

This article was an interesting read. It is an update from the authors’ original paper printed in the NEJM in 2014 regarding the results of an implantable pulse generator (IPG) for stimulating the hypoglossal nerve in response to respiration. This...

Otoplasty equals happiness

There are frequent criticisms of procedures that are viewed as cosmetic therefore of no benefit to health. Here a German group have looked at the benefit of otoplasty on quality of life. They point out that ‘beautiful people have an...

Identifying early flap failure

The holy grail of flap monitoring is an easy, reliable and predictive method to identify impending compromise. Does this paper provide it? Various methods have been used to improve our ability to monitor the viability of a flap and here...

Voice issues in transgender individuals

Recently, former decathlete and TV personality, Bruce Jenner, admitted that he is transgender, thereby becoming the most famous and vocal advocate for transgender issues. Transgender refers to female to male or male to female identification. In either case, voice modification...

Swahili speech development in pre-school children

This study describes the speech development of 24 typically developing first language Swahili speaking children between the ages of three and five years 11 months in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and was motivated by the 2013 position paper drafted by...

Promotion of trust with adult hearing impairment in hearing healthcare

The goal of this study was to assess how trust is promoted among adult hearing impaired patients seeking hearing healthcare. Previous interview transcript data collected from 29 adults across hearing health care centres in four countries was re-analysed thematically in...

Sinonasal undifferentiated carcinoma – slowly getting there

The rarest of the rare, sinonasal tumours form only a small part of the total number of head and neck tumours and undifferentiated carcinoma (SNUC) is one of the rarest of this group. There is some data (and some expert...

Centralisation of care for acoustic tumour surgeries?

Several factors are responsible for readmission after acoustic tumour removal. The authors retrospectively studied the association between hospital, patient and insurance factors with the rate of readmission following acoustic tumour removal in the United States using the Nationwide Readmission Database...