You searched for "reconstructive"
Patient-related factors that require revision surgery for otosclerosis
Stapes surgery for otosclerosis has a high success and low complication rate but, over a period of time, good results can deteriorate, requiring revision surgery. In this study, the authors have focused on patients’ demographic data as predictive factors for...
What blood tests should be requested to investigate vocal cord paralysis?
Patients who are discovered to have a vocal cord palsy with no obvious cause on history or examination routinely undergo investigations to exclude an underlying pathology. Cross-sectional imaging of the relevant recurrent laryngeal nerve is required, but considerable variability has...
Previous radiotherapy does not cause worse outcomes in patients with differentiated thyroid cancer
Radiation exposure from nuclear incidents, especially in childhood, is known to increase the risk of thyroid cancer. This large retrospective study from the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre sought to determine if thyroid cancers in patients with prior exposure to...
Airway intervention for epiglottitis
This Japanese study was a retrospective review of 83 patients admitted with epiglottitis over a 9.5-year period. The authors found that the factors that were significantly more likely to be present in patients who received airway intervention were: odynophagia; drooling;...
Correlation between middle ear and mastoid volumes with results of type 1 paediatric tympanoplasty
This is a retrospective study of 45 paediatric patients, aged between eight and 18 years, who underwent Type 1 cartilage graft tympanoplasty using conchal cartilage. Middle ear and mastoid volumes of these children were correlated with anatomical and functional outcomes...
Extrapolating lessons from vestibular schwannoma management
This paper presents a delightfully simple and sensible hypothesis for the management of benign schwannomas in the head and neck region. They have taken the approach used for the management of vestibular schwannomas and used the same principles to assess...
Do tonsillotomies have a higher revision rate than tonsillectomies?
Tonsillotomies have gained popular acceptance in children with sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) in recent years. Short-term advantages that have been shown in the literature include lower haemorrhage rates, shorter operation times and less pain. Evidence for long-term effects are sparse due...
Does ‘weekend effect’ alter post tonsillectomy haemorrhage rates?
Staffing levels are generally low over the weekends and senior physicians are less easily available. It is generally believed that this affects patients undergoing high-risk surgery. Whether doing tonsillectomy at weekends adds to the risks of post tonsillectomy haemorrhage is...
Which technique is better for cholesteatoma surgery?
There continues to be debate over the benefits and limitations of different techniques for cholesteatoma surgery. This retrospective review of 132 cases over a 10 year period with primary cholesteatoma from Turkey tried to establish which technique [canal wall up...
Does trainee participation in cochlear implant surgery affect operative times?
The role of surgical education is a very sensitive issue in spite of the obvious need and the obligation of doctors to pass on their knowledge and experience to the next generation. This study is very interesting as it assesses...
The use of botulinum toxin A to reverse paralysis of the lower lip
The aim of this retrospective case series was to examine the role of botulinum toxin A in paediatric patients with paralysis of the lower lip. Depressor or elevator muscles of the lip (unaffected side) were injected with varying doses of...
