In the last 20 years, rates of adult tonsillectomy have fallen in the order of 50%. The flipside to this, is that the number of admissions of patients with acute tonsilitis is more than double the reduction in tonsillectomy rates....
Have you heard the noise around APD? With a flurry of interest around noise-cancellation and APD, Dale Hewitt offers his take on the evidence and theory. When and why did this question first arise? An article was published by BBC...
François Patou discusses how the recent advances in virtual reality technologies can be used to support people living with hearing loss. He outlines some of the novel virtual reality tools that are emerging as resources to support delivery of audiology...
In this article, the authors describe three key challenges faced in developing hearing therapeutics. Collaboration between companies, sectors and disciplines will be key to finding solutions. The unmet need for therapies for hearing loss grows apace, with prevalence rising across...
Abi Asher, Clinical Lead for the IAD programme in Cambridge describes how hearing care professionals work together to make the best recommendation for the patient, in turn helping navigate through the various devices now on offer. Multidisciplinary teams (MDTs) are...
Having enjoyed yourself at so many meetings, it may strike you or be suggested to you by ‘friends’, that it would be a good idea to organise an international conference. Think of the kudos, the fame, the financial gain for...
There are challenges in developing outcomes measures; Professor Hall presents five top pointers for making rapid progress in developing outcome measures for research purposes. Anyone who has worked clinically with hearing loss will appreciate that every patient’s experience is personal....
Patients with conductive or mixed hearing loss become candidates for amplification when reconstructive surgery is not viable. Three common amplification options are conventional acoustic devices, such as behind-the-ear devices (BTEs), (implantable) bone-conduction devices and active middle ear implants. The goal...
Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) system development has often made early use of innovative technology. Touch screens have been a part of this technology for some time. In fact, touch screens were invented in 1965 but it wasn’t until the...
Electrically evoked compound action potentials (eCAP) and electrically evoked stapedius reflex threshold (eSRT) techniques were compared to establish how well the two techniques correlated and which yielded quicker results in a group of paediatric cochlear implant (CI) users. This team...
Limited information is known about the localisation skills of paediatric cochlear implant patients who were good hearing aid users before their hearing deteriorated. As localisation is a skill often associated with good natural hearing, there is a worry that implants...
This is an interesting and topical review of the emerging biotechnology and pharmaceutical solutions for hearing loss and related conditions such as tinnitus. This paper suggests we are on the cusp of a very large step-change in the way we...