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How long is too long? Waiting times for speech and language therapy

Waiting lists are a reality of clinical practice, and many health and social care professionals become used to having to cope with this. The authors of this paper addressed this issue by examining written submissions to the 2014 Senate Inquiry...

Patient positioning for transnasal flexible laryngoscopy

The position of a patient’s head during flexible nasendoscopy to visualise the larynx does not usually require much consideration – adequate views are almost always obtained with a patient sitting in a neutral position. Occasionally however, there will be patients...

Mental practice could be a great COVID-19 solution for delivering swallow rehab

Motor imagery is defined as the process of voluntarily generating a mental image of a motor function without actually doing said function. Mental practice (MP) is the process of doing this repeatedly; practising it. There is some evidence that this...

Endoscopic stapes surgery

This retrospective Turkish study looked at the audiological and surgical outcomes of 40 patients who underwent endoscopic stapes surgery over a three-year period. To assess the learning curve, the patients were divided into two groups based on the date of...

Reasons for attending annual hearing aid review appointments

The aim of this study was to investigate what factors influence hearing aid users’ decision to attend or not attend an annual hearing aid review (HAR) appointment. Two separate surveys were created for attendees and non-attendees. An invitation letter was...

Clinical histopathology of 250 parotidectomy patients

Clinical histopathology of 250 parotidectomy patients This is a retrospective study of 250 consecutive parotidectomy patients at units in Belgium and the Netherlands. The sensitivity and specificity of FNAC was 64% and 99% respectively, the sensitivity being slightly lower than...

Doing it for the men: diversifying the speech and language therapy profession

It is known that many health professions are dominated by females, particularly the allied health professions, such as speech and language therapy. This is more pronounced in the US than in the UK, Australia and other countries. The authors of...

Counting up discourse

Speech and language researchers and health professionals alike strive to measure communication abilities using relevant and psychometrically sound tools. Discourse measures are potential tools which reflect everyday communication more accurately than other more traditional measures. However, time has been a...

Voice and unilateral vocal fold paralysis

Voice outcomes are the main comparators when managing unilateral vocal fold paralysis (UVP). In a review of the literature, 11 voice indicators are included in 80% of all articles. However, when surgeons were surveyed on their clinical preferences and their...

Narrow band imaging in laryngopharyngeal reflux

Narrow band imaging (NBI) is a tool on the Olympus endoscopic systems that uses blue and green wavelengths to enhance visualisation of mucosal vasculature. It has been used to aid in the early diagnosis of upper aerodigestive tract cancers. A...

Bright young things: executive functioning in younger, older and aphasic people

Executive function comprises several higher order cognitive processes such as planning, organisation, adaptation, maintenance, monitoring and decision making. It is thought that difficulties in cognitive flexibility in people with aphasia are associated with difficulties in executive function rather than the...

Is the greater auricular nerve important in parotid surgery?

The greater auricular nerve (GAN) is often partially or totally sacrificed during parotidectomy procedures. This was a retrospective study comparing auricular sensation and quality of life in patients that either had their GAN preserved or sacrificed. In the shortterm, patients...