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A new clinical device to monitor nasal blockage

Chia-Hung Li, a Medical Device PhD student from University College London’s (UCL) Institute of Healthcare Engineering, is currently leading a PhD project to develop a clinical device to monitor nasal blockage. Jo Rimmer spoke to him about what he is...

Management of single-sided deafness in adults: a bone conduction solution

Single-sided deafness (SSD) presents a limited number of methods for management, and not all of them meet the patient’s expectations. The aim of this article is to set out the available bone-conduction treatment methods for managing single‑sided deafness in adults....

The role of metrics in studies of hearing and cognition

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...

Neural plasticity and aural rehabilitation

Neural plasticity refers to an ability of the brain and central nervous system to change their structure and function or their reorganisation in response to environmental cues, experience, learning, behaviour, injury and / or diseases and treatments. Neural plasticity is...

Audiology in this issue... Paediatric Audiology Gamechangers (NovDec18)

Fifty years ago, the National Conference on Education of the Deaf followed up on the Babbidge Report of 1965, recognising the failure of oralism in deaf education. Because young, deaf children at that time did not have access to sound, they could not develop speech and language. Further, because children were identified at two years or later, early intervention was only a dream.

Embracing deafness and the silent world

Brian Kokoruwe shares his journey from growing up during civil war in Nigeria to becoming Director of Deaf UK Athletics and a published author. While I am active in the Deaf BSL community, involved in Deaf sports and the Government...

Speech mapping and the benefits of using in clinical practice

Fitting hearing aids is not simply a case of one size fits all. Nicole da Rocha discusses the benefits of using speech mapping as a verification tool. The verification of hearing aids has become quintessential for best practice. Using either...

Screening: evaluating the outcomes of early intervention

Newborn hearing screening is now the accepted standard of care in several countries, and is becoming increasingly more established worldwide. White [1] reported eight countries screening over 90% of newborns, ten screening between 25-89% of births and a further 54...

Could social isolation be a factor in the link between hearing loss and dementia?

In 1802, Beethoven wrote to his brothers Carl and Johann about his hearing loss: “You men who think or say that I am malevolent, stubborn, or misanthropic, how greatly do you wrong me. You do not know the secret cause...

Re-establishing ENT services in Liberia after three decades

Liberia is a country located on the West African coast bordered by Guinea, Sierra Leone and the Ivory Coast. Founded in 1821, it is Africa’s oldest modern republic and was established on land acquired for freed US slaves by the...

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...

Worldwide picture of candidacy for cochlear implantation

Who should get a cochlear implant? Candidacy is one of the most important and widely discussed topics in the field of cochlear implantation. Here, Chris Raine and Debi Vickers outline cochlear implant candidacy in the UK, and compare this with...