This story is dedicated to my dear friend and much-missed colleague, Heinz Stammberger, with whom some of these moments were shared (or endured). Having used a rigid endoscope in my postgrad thesis in the early 1980s to show that the...
Following their caudal migration at eight weeks of development, the parathyroid glands normally locate posterolaterally to the upper pole of the thyroid gland at the level of the cricoid cartilage (superior parathyroid glands arising from the fourth branchial pouch and...
Innovation has been the by-word of almost every meeting for the past five years. But what is it really? And how do we achieve it? I’ve always thought of it as a way of solving problems you have, not only...
“Dr Marion P Downs, an innovator in the field of paediatric audiology and a tireless advocate for the early identification of hearing loss, passed away on November 13, 2014. During her exemplary career at the University of Colorado Health Sciences...
Since the beginning of our specialty, generations of patients and surgeons have faced the challenging clinical problem of recurrent respiratory papillomatosis (RRP). Driven by a persistent and chronic infection with low-risk human papillomavirus (HPV) types 6 or 11, it is...
Su De is one of the UK’s most prominent paediatric ORL surgeons, and has a leading role in planning ESPO 2023. Hannah Emerson caught up with Su recently to explore some of her thoughts and her plans for ESPO. You’ve...
In 2001 a survey was conducted in a number of towns across the world, including Exeter in the UK, to identify the level of awareness and knowledge of aphasia in the community. Aphasia is difficulty in producing or understanding language...
The removal of impacted wisdom teeth is a common surgical procedure with possible complications including postoperative bleeding and wound infection and alveolar osteitis. Preventing osteitis is dependent on retaining the blood clot in the socket with no infection. There are...
Introduction When perceiving sounds in real-world listening environments, older adults encounter several sources of degradation that can interfere with the perceptual process (Figure 1). Target signals (i.e. the sounds that a listener wants to focus on) have specific acoustic characteristics...
This paper is a single-centre review of adult cochlear implants in patients with preserved low-frequency hearing, focusing on the outcomes at 10 months post-implantation, and the rates of electroacoustic stimulation actually used in this group of patients. The centre identified...
David Black and Charlie Hall reiterate Vin Paleri’s pleas for a common sense evidence-based approach by those who allocate healthcare resources to the now urgent issue of HPV-related disease. They discuss the merits of different vaccines and the need for...
Bringing light into darkness can also be a task for the physician. With the advent of endoscopy (initially by reflecting light into body cavities), new methods of diagnosis and treatment became available to the otologist. In 1865, the Scotsman John...