Search

Communicating with patients in 
‘Plain English’

Physicians have long been accused of using unnecessarily complicated language and impenetrable jargon as a way of maintaining their status, prestige and high earnings-potential, bamboozling the public and excluding them from meaningful discussion as part of what George Bernard Shaw...

Thyroid nodules – time for a rational imaging approach

“The more you know, the harder it is to take decisive action. Once you become informed, you start seeing complexities and shades of gray. You realize that nothing is as clear as it first appears. Ultimately, knowledge is paralyzing.” Calvin,...

Thyroid ultrasound elastography: does nodule stiffness predict malignancy?

Approximately 50% of the general population has a thyroid nodule while 5-15% of these are malignant [1]. A major challenge, therefore, is how to detect the malignant nodules for appropriate, timely treatment and avoid unnecessary, costly investigations for the remainder....

Patient and public involvement in research

One step further from involving patients in setting research priorities is to involve them in the planning and recruitment stages of the subsequent trials and studies. Here, Carl Philpott and Aneeka Degun explain the concept of Patient and Public Involvement...

The National Bone Conducting Hearing Implant Registry

Are you an otologist with an interest in implant surgery? Is your unit on the registry? If not, you’d better have a good excuse after reading this… What is the National BCHI Registry? The National Bone Conducting Hearing Implant (BCHI)...

10 steps to improving transition to adult services

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...

Achieving consensus on candidacy for cochlear implantation

The British Cochlear Implant Group’s candidacy working group recently ran a national exercise, working towards a consensus on candidacy for cochlear implantation in the UK. Padraig Kitterick and Debi Vickers were instrumental in this exercise, and in the article below,...

Acoustic shock: definitions and clinical aspects

Acoustic shock, a previously little-known and poorly understood clinical entity, came to the public’s attention in 2019 due to a high-profile legal case of a musician at the Royal Opera House. In this fascinating article, Andrew Parker and William Parker...

Machine learning and the future of otolaryngology

If you are over 30 years of age, you have witnessed a technology revolution that has grossly affected how we live: computers have come from being an oddity to an everyday feature in our households and places of work; the...