Journal Reviews
Impact of the updated cancer staging system on HPV-positive disease
The AJCC cancer staging manual was updated in 2017 (8th edition). It is used in the MDT setting for planning treatment and assessing prognosis for individual patients, and is also widely used internationally in clinical trials. Unlike previous iterations of...
The rise of AI in the head and neck clinic
There has been a huge focus in recent months on the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) in all aspects of modern life, and the head and neck clinic is no exception it appears. This paper builds on previous work to...
Method of delivery: all topical nasal corticosteroids are not made equal
There is an increasing body of evidence that the role of surgery for chronic rhinosinusitis is to facilitate the delivery of topical medical treatment – most notably, topical corticosteroids. Two recent studies, one using flow dynamics and another one examining...
Maturation of BC attenuation
The aim of this study was to clarify the reason for differences between bone-conduction hearing in adults and infants. The authors investigated how the sound pressure level in the ear canal changes depending on the bone-conduction transducer placement. By using...
Semantic fluency test to investigate deaf children
Semantic fluency task (SFT) is used to measure lexical organisation and executive function across the lifespan and requires participants to name examples from a particular semantic category in a specific period of time. Using this test, the authors investigated a...
One anastomosis or two
This is a cumulative meta-analysis from Hong Kong reviewing 27 articles and a total of 7,389 flaps. The authors, at the outset, acknowledge that the number of anastomoses is not the only factor of venous compromise and flap failure. Nonetheless...
Help or hinder: how and why do SLTs make clinical decisions around swallowing?
Dysphagia is a relatively common consequence of stroke, with estimates between 50% and 60% of people presenting with swallowing dysfunction following stroke. It is associated with pneumonia, malnutrition and dehydration which in turn lead to increased length of hospital admission,...
Lymph node ratio is a significant predictor for loco-regional recurrence after neck dissection in patients with papillary thyroid cancer
Lymph node metastases are common in papillary thyroid cancer (PTC), yet the impact of nodal metastases on survival remains unclear. Lymph node density (LND) is the ratio between the number of positive lymph nodes excised and the total number of...
Can comorbidities predict complications after total laryngectomy? Utility of the Modified Frailty Index (mFI) score
Decision making regarding appropriate treatment for laryngeal cancer is complex. Patients undergoing total laryngectomy experience significant changes in anatomy and physiology and are at risk for significant postoperative complications. These patients represent a group with significant comorbidities. In addition, patients...
Surgical and non-interventional management of laryngomalacia
In this elaborate review article, the authors have described various aspects of laryngomalacia and its surgical management with supraglottoplasty or otherwise, gleaned from an extensive review of the literature which provided evidence or the lack of it in relation to...
Allergen specific subcutaneous immunotherapy helps in prolonged control of allergic rhinitis
One of the commonest allergens involved in perennial allergic rhinitis is house dust mite. A good proportion of these cases prove intractable to treatment with oral and intranasal antihistamines and intranasal steroid sprays. Immunotherapy is considered a useful alternative and...
Diagnostic performance of non-echo-planar diffusion weighted MRI in detection of suspected cholesteatoma
Even though a ‘second look’ remains a gold standard for detection of residual cholesteatoma after intact canal wall techniques, non-echo-planar diffusion weighted MRI is considered a reasonable alternative to avoid further surgery. However, to establish or exclude a cholesteatoma de...
