21st January 2021 Back to basics Yesterday I went right back to where my medical career began. I grew up in Germany, bilingual. A prerequisite to studying medicine in Germany is that applicants have to spend two months working as...
During the COVID-19 pandemic, new guidance for newborn hearing screening programmes and management of audiology referrals was released by Public Health England [1,2]. There was also joint guidance from the UK professional bodies [3] and guidance from NHS England regarding...
Matthew Cherko, Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation TrustCutting Edge Laryngology has proven to be a biennial hallmark conference, and this year displayed that more than ever. It saw London’s Royal Society of Medicine host three days brimming with excellent academic and...
In the pre-antibiotic era, purulent otitis media often resulted in a permanent eardrum perforation with hearing loss. In addition to pig or fish bladders, eggshell membranes and cigarette paper were used as eardrum prostheses. I have vivid personal boyhood memories...
Hearing rehabilitation is a key focus of the management of patients with vestibular schwannoma. But how do we rehabilitate hearing when the cochlear nerve has been damaged by tumour, irradiation, or resective surgery? Mathieu Trudel, Scott Rutherford and Simon Lloyd...
The honk of a car. An ambulance siren. A fire alarm. The ring of a doorbell. These alerting sounds are used to communicate information of varying levels of importance to us in our homes on a daily basis. Unfortunately this...
Landmark Paper: Sullivan FM, Swan IRC, Donnan PT, et al. Early treatment with prednisolone or acyclovir in Bell’s Palsy. N Engl J Med 2007;357(16):1598-607. Facial nerve paralysis as a consequence of Bell’s palsy can result in devastating long-term effects on...
Planetary health needs to be addressed at a societal level for any meaningful impact to occur. As the global director of sustainability for a law firm, Marion Palmer provides an overview of the responsibilities of corporate organisations for both a...
The renowned audiologist and inventor Mead Killion passed away comfortably on 3 November 2025 in Elkhorn, Wisconsin, US. Mead was known for inventing products that left us scratching our heads, trying to figure out why we hadn’t thought of them...
Children and parents like the reassurance that staying under the care of the team who looked after them from birth gives, but as the child approaches adulthood he / she must come under the care of a new team. This...
In this article, the authors describe the retrosigmoid approach to a vestibular schwannoma, using an ultrasonic bone aspirator as an alternative to the standard drill. Vestibular schwannomas (VS) are benign, usually slow-growing tumours of the vestibular nerve. Management of VS...