Journal Reviews
The debate: endoscopic vs microscopic ear surgery – meta-analysis of outcomes
Although the endoscopic approach to ear surgery has become more common in clinical practice, the debate about its role versus the traditional microscopic approach continues in many ENT units. This meta-analysis from the Mount Sinai ENT department in New York...
Outcomes of temporal bone-resurfacing for pulsatile tinnitus associated with vascular wall anomalies
This month’s Ed’s choice is an interesting systematic review into the management of pulsatile tinnitus. There are impressive results from resurfacing of symptomatic anatomical abnormalities of the temporal bone and I suspect that referrals for further imaging and otology clinic...
Peripheral nerve stimulation for chronic refractory pain
Peripheral nerve stimulation (PNS) plays an important role in treating chronic refractory pain syndromes that manifest in limited distributions and overlap with areas of neurologic innervation. The process is generally thought to capitalise on the inhibition and activation of pain-related...
Sphenopalatine ganglion block in endoscopic sinus surgery reduces intra and post-operative morbidity
The authors present results of a meta-analysis to investigate the role of sphenopalatine ganglion block (SPGB) in reducing postoperative pain in endoscopic sinus surgery (ESS). An electronic database search (Pubmed, SCOPUS, Google Scholar, Embase, and the Cochrane Register of Controlled...
Cocaine detection hours after FESS
This is a very interesting article from Australia regarding the bioavailability of cocaine following atomised application prior to endoscopic sinus surgery. The well-established practice of preparing the nasal mucosa for sinus surgery involves the placement of a usually modified Moffett’s...
Nasal physiology and septal perforations
This interesting article from North Carolina and New York aims to assess the impact of anterior septal perforations on nasal physiology, using computational fluid dynamics and computer simulation. A computerised 3D model was constructed of a normal patient aged 37,...
Death related to epistaxis
One of the commonest emergencies presenting in ENT is epistaxis. The presentation can be through accident and emergency or through ward referrals. In this national audit of epistaxis management involving 113 centres, it was noted that 33 of the 985...
Recovery room cortisol to predict long-term glucocorticoid supplementation
The authors report the results of using recovery room (RR) cortisol to predict the need for long-term glucocorticoids in patients who underwent transsphenoidal surgery (TSS). They conducted a retrospective study of preoperative morning serum cortisol (MSC), RR cortisol and day...
CRSwNP, another monoclonal antibody
Interleukins 4, 5 and 13 were shown to be important factors in type 2 inflammation, which characterises chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyposis (CRSwNP). In CRSwNP non-responders and those who recur short after-surgery monoclonal antibodies might be an answer. Examples include...
Nasal disease and quality of life in athletes
Rhinitis is a nasal condition which is generally underappreciated in primary care and even less in athletes. In this study, the authors specify nasal symptoms constituting rhinitis as nasal blockage, sneezing bouts, rhinorrhoea and itching and compare their prevalence in...
Superior semicircular canal volumetry
This study uses superior semicircular canal dehiscence (SSCD) volumetry to measure the size of SSCD. The authors imported high-resolution computed tomographic images of the temporal bone into segmentation software. They measured the dehiscence lengths and volumes on coronal images (instead...
The continued evolution of surgical techniques for bone anchored hearing devices
This paper is not the first, and is unlikely to be the last, to look at a variation on the current technique for inserting the percutaneous titanium bone-anchored component of a bone conduction hearing device. In less than a decade,...
