The never-ending vertigo

The authors comment on the Barany Society guidelines for bilateral vestibulopathy (BV). This is one of the murky entities of vestibulogy. By definition, patients will eventually lose vestibular function and don’t experience any vertigo. However, some patients still get recurrent...

Softband vs. adhesive adapter in children with unilateral microtia and atresia

A bone conduction device is a well-established treatment indicated for patients with unilateral microtia and canal atresia. There are a variety of nonsurgical bone conduction hearing aids (BCHAs) with different coupling methods (softbands/adhesive adapter/spectacles). There appears to be uncertainty of...

Advances in auditory implants

This article provides an overview of auditory implants. Implanted auditory devices may be classified into bone conduction implants (BCI) and active middle ear implants (AMEI) that stimulate cochlear hair cells, and cochlear implants (CI) that stimulate neural structures. CIs bypass...

Conductive hearing loss and temporal processing

This Turkish study looked at the effect of using hearing aids on auditory temporal processing (the ability of the hearing system to process the temporal properties of a sound stimulus in a certain period of time) in conductive hearing loss....

Benign positional paroxysmal vertigo manoeuvres in children and adolescents: a systematic review

In this paper of Saniasiaya et al, the literature review is conducted in accordance to the PRISMA consensus, aiming to investigate the outcomes of canalith repositioning manoeuvres (CRM) to treat benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV) in a paediatric and young...

Gadolinium enhanced MRI and the diagnosis of Ménière’s disease

Despite various criteria applied over the years to diagnose Ménière’s disease since the concept of endolymphatic hydrops was first observed in postmortem examinations of patients in 1938, the diagnosis still remains mainly clinical. To visualise endolymphatic hydrops in MRI imaging,...

Hearing preservation in CI, any predictors?

The electrically evoked compound action potential (eCAP), obtained non-invasively from cochlear implant (CI) recipients, represents a population response of the auditory nerve to electrical stimulation. The eCAP characteristics include threshold (the lower the better), growth of response (the steeper the...

Sudden sensorineural hearing loss – who will get better?

Idiopathic sudden sensorineural hearing loss (ISSNHL) is a rare but potentially devastating condition. For patients presenting with this condition, prognosis is of paramount importance. Wu et al begin to address this issue by retrospectively studying 17 potential prognostic factors for...

Effects of diet and exercise on tinnitus

Subjective tinnitus is the perception of sound without any external stimulus. There is no consensus on the aetiology of tinnitus. Obesity is one condition that has been associated with subjective tinnitus. The authors conducted a randomised controlled trial to assess...

Preoperative unaided maximum monosyllabic word recognition score as a predictor of CI outcomes

This retrospective study supports early intervention and hearing rehabilitation with hearing amplification for adults. The authors included 103 patients (128 ears), who had undergone cochlear implantation over a seven-year period, in this study. All patients had been assessed for their...

Relationship between high resolution radiological features of the otic capsuleand audiometric parameters in patients with otscerosis

The audiometric pattern in patients with otosclerosis and outcomes of stapedectomy are variable. Whether this has anything to do with the number of sites affected by otosclerosis in the otic capsule and the disease pattern according to foci location, foci...

Hearing aids to improve balance in the elderly?

Patients with hearing loss have been found to be more likely to develop dementia. Hearing loss is also associated with poor balance and higher risk of falls, especially in the elderly population. There is increasing evidence that treating hearing loss...