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Improving cochlear-implant performance in the short- and medium-term

Can bespoke cochlear implant programming strategies reduce the variability seen in patient performance with an implant? Bob Carlyon reviews the current situation and gives us a glimpse of the future. Although many cochlear implant (CI) patients understand speech well in...

10 steps to improving transition to adult services

Children and parents like the reassurance that staying under the care of the team who looked after them from birth gives, but as the child approaches adulthood he / she must come under the care of a new team. This...

Airway stenting in paediatric ENT

Although experience in the use of airway stents in adults is considerable, their use in children is more recent and more limited. Cláudia Schweiger and Michael J Rutter provide an overview of stents and their use in paediatric airway. Stenting...

Machine learning and the future of otolaryngology

If you are over 30 years of age, you have witnessed a technology revolution that has grossly affected how we live: computers have come from being an oddity to an everyday feature in our households and places of work; the...

The role of objective measures and imaging to optimise cochlear implant outcomes

Should we be using new or novel objective measures and imaging to assist with our cochlear implant patients? Debi Vickers and Shak Saeed describe current clinical techniques and present advances that have the potential to optimise outcomes. Introduction It is...

The ear-brain connection: the role of cognition in neural speech processing

Audiologists and other hearing healthcare professionals have become increasingly interested in the importance of cognitive function in the assessment and management of hearing loss, especially in light of evidence suggesting a link between hearing loss and cognitive decline in older...

Mobile technologies to support global ear and hearing care

By combining mobile technology with artificial intelligence, more people can access ear and hearing care. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that worldwide, nearly half a billion people have moderate or worse hearing loss [1]. The vast majority of people...

Differing outcomes of three Sub-Saharan Africa journeys with the common goal of task sharing in audiology

Task sharing can be designed and implemented specific to the needs of each programme. Foundational principles of global health include developing local leadership as a means to successful sustainable service provision in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) or regions. It...

Bringing ear care and hearing services to the hardest to reach: the potential of primary healthcare workers

Can workers from the local community plug the workforce gap in providing ear and hearing care? Bringing ear and hearing care services closer to the community remains a key component of reducing the burden of ear and hearing conditions across...

Health related quality of life measures as outcome parameters in middle ear diseases

Surely the only outcome needed for post-surgical ears is a better PTA? Marcus Neudert argues there should be more to it than that. To draw a comprehensive picture of the disease-associated restrictions in patients with chronic otitis media, audiometric outcome...

Plasticity with cochlear implants: individual factors in the outcomes

Andrej Kral gives us an overview of neuronal plasticity in congenital hearing loss, and discusses why it is core to our clinical interventions in hearing loss and rehabilitation. The brain is born immature and undergoes extensive shaping during early development....

Why and what should hearing care professionals know about cognitive impairment and dementia

Good reasons to care about cognitive impairment and dementia in audiology If asking people what they fear most when getting to old age, it is cognitive decline that is named most often. This comes with the expectation of limitations in...