Journal Reviews
Unravelling the Meniere’s vs. migraine conundrum – what does the mastoid contribute?
This is an interesting observational study that attempts to classify subtypes of Meniere’s disease (MD) in relation to the coexistence of migraine. It is well known that the two conditions share common characteristics, making diagnosis and treatment challenging at times....
Doing it for the people: how to do speech and language therapy
This review article distils 58 studies, collating information from people with aphasia, their families and clinical speech and language therapists summarising the seven habits of highly effective aphasia therapists. Habit 1: Effective therapists invest time in and prioritise relationships with...
A trial of house dust mite sublingual tablet in children with allergic rhinitis
The house dust mite (HDM) is one of the commonest causative agents in allergic rhinitis (AR), affecting patients across all demographics. Recently, sublingual immunotherapy (SLIT) has been shown in clinical trials and meta-analysis to be effective compared to placebo in...
Tinnitus association with psychiatric and personality disorders
Tinnitus attracts large interest among researchers all over the world due to its negative psychological side-effects. This study aimed at investigating lifetime and current prevalence of psychiatric and personality disorders in patients with long-lasting and distressing tinnitus. Participants included 49...
Power tools dance off
The use of the harmonic scalpel is popular with some head and neck surgeons. This study looked at selective neck dissections for 40 patients with oral cavity carcinoma. They were randomised into harmonic scalpel (HS) use and monopolar electrocautery. The...
Do you use the evidence or do you just know to do that?
In this day and age we generally consider healthcare practice to be evidence-based. Unfortunately there are not always the plethora of research articles available that address the dilemmas of day-to-day clinical practice. This piece of work considers what factors influence...
Sublingual house dust mite immunotherapy
House dust mite immunotherapy in allergic rhinitis was shown to be effective in trials with a relatively small number of participants. The authors of this study performed a multicentre double-blind randomised controlled trial to investigate effects of house dust mite...
Planning for end of life care: is there a role for the speech and language therapist?
This article presents a scoping review of the research literature on the role of speech and language therapists in palliative care settings. The researchers conducted a search using several electronic databases focusing on palliative, terminal and end of life (EOL)...
Hypoglossal stimulation for OSA
Continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) is a highly effective treatment for moderate-to-severe obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA), but suffers significantly from poor patient adherence. This paper reports the three-year outcomes of a prospective multicentre cohort study examining the effect of hypoglossal...
Efficacy of interventions for stuttering: literature review
This is the first part of a two-article review of the efficacy of different modalities of treatments used for treatment of stuttering / stammering. In this article, the authors describe their efforts to identify and quantify evidence on various interventions...
