Search

Music and cochlear implants

Introduction The introduction of multichannel cochlear implants (CIs) in the early 1980s provided children and adults with severe and profound hearing losses with greatly improved speech perception skills. In this paper, however, I am going to focus on an area...

‘The Sun does not forget a village just because it is too small’ – African proverb

Solar powered hearing aids In the middle of the morning of January 24, 2002, I had been in Otse for only three days, a village of 3500 in the south of Botswana, when I heard a knock at the door....

Aetiology, investigation and acute management of sudden sensorineural hearing loss

The cause of a single sided sensorineural hearing loss has a wide variety of aetiologies. This review, by Edwin Halliday, looks specifically at the differential diagnostic causes of a sudden sensorineural hearing loss, the relevant investigations and the management should...

Rotational chair testing: “To rotate, or not to rotate, that is the real question”

Passive whole body rotation tests are widely considered to be the ‘gold standard’ for the identification of bilateral peripheral vestibular disorders (bPVD), but also have a part to play in identifying unilateral disorders (uPVD). In this article Paul Radomskij discusses...

The effects of polypharmacy in the elderly

Another pill to cure the ill? Alec Lapira discusses the warning signs of polypharmacy in the elderly population. Polypharmacy in the elderly Polypharmacy – defined as the use of five or more medications – occurs in 20–37% of older people...

2014: Are today’s implantable devices better than conventional solutions for patients with conductive or mixed hearing loss?

Patients with conductive or mixed hearing loss become candidates for amplification when reconstructive surgery is not viable. Three common amplification options are conventional acoustic devices, such as behind-the-ear devices (BTEs), (implantable) bone-conduction devices and active middle ear implants. The goal...