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Establishing a hearing service and ear hospital in Nepal: the Ear Aid Nepal experience

Following the earthquake that devastated Nepal in April 2015, the year ended on a positive note with the opening of an ENT hospital in Pokhara. Mike Smith, a UK-born ENT surgeon has been the driving force behind the conception and...

Changing behaviour with a human factors approach

The Francis Report (2013) identified multiple problems relating to the safety culture of Stafford Hospital in the period 2005 – 2009, as well as serious failings in the supervisory and regulatory systems of the NHS. Particular criticism was directed at...

Redeployment of audiologists during COVID-19

As the demand on intensive therapy units in the NHS increased, volunteers from the audiology profession stepped in to support colleagues. Here, they share their experiences of caring on the frontline. Redefining normal: from outpatients to the ICU By Emilee...

The multidisciplinary voice clinic

In his inimitable way, Nick Gibbins tells us why the voice clinic is the highlight of his week – and his very own field of dreams. The voice clinic has come a long way in the last 40 years. The...

The future of treatments for hearing and balance: a 15 and 50-year perspective

Jameel Muzaffar and Manohar Bance paint a picture of what otology will look like 15 and 50 years’ time. Will we still need doctors? Will there still be an ENT news journal? The last 50 years have seen advances including...

Are ENT patients who research their symptoms online better informed?

All our patients look up their symptoms online before they visit us, don’t they? And patients who do so are better informed than those who don’t, right? Well, that’s not actually the case… The ‘information era’ More information is now...

ENT clinics – 50 years of progress…?

Cocaine in abundance, eustachian tube catheterisation, and the ever-present threat of a fire in the clinic… How have things changed in the last few decades? Retired ENT surgeon, Douglas MacMillan, tells us of his experiences starting out in the late...

Role of interventional neuroradiology in otorhinolarygological pathology 
– a brief review

Introduction Since its advent in 1964 when Dotter percutaneously dilated a stenosed femoral artery [1], interventional radiology has undergone tremendous advancement in both imaging and devices that have enabled the operator (interventional radiologist) to access very distal small vasculature and...

Simulation: human factors scenario training

It is said that surgical training has suffered as a result of a combination of factors – through the introduction of work time restrictions such as the European Working Time Directive (EWTD) [1], a limit on the number of years...

Sniffing out the evidence – COVID-19 and loss of sense of smell and taste

Louis Pasteur once observed: “In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind.” Professor Hopkins was certainly prepared when a few anecdotes of smell problems started to accumulate early in the pandemic’s course. Post-viral olfactory loss is nothing...