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The Veterans Hearing Fund

Dawn Bramham introduces us to the newly launched Veterans Hearing Fund (VHF). This organisation aims to improve the lives of military personnel with hearing loss by providing access to technologies, services and bespoke rehabilitation that are not routinely available via...

Detecting postoperative cholesteatoma with diffusion weighted magnetic resonance imaging

Middle ear cleft cholesteatoma is an inflammatory disease that erodes local bony structures and can cause otorrhea, hearing loss, vertigo and intracranial complications. It is usually treated with surgery, typically canal wall up (CWU) or canal wall down (CWD) surgery....

The pioneers of endoscopy and the sword swallowers

Adolf Kussmaul drew inspiration from an unlikely source to further the development of endoscopy… The early pioneers of airway endoscopy and oesophagoscopy were bedevilled by two major and seemingly insurmountable problems. One was the paucity of light sources, with reliance...

Experience on the front line

21st January 2021 Back to basics Yesterday I went right back to where my medical career began. I grew up in Germany, bilingual. A prerequisite to studying medicine in Germany is that applicants have to spend two months working as...

Reflux – diagnostic tools and special considerations in singers

Depending on your point of view, laryngopharyngeal reflux (LPR) is either ubiquitous or is over-diagnosed. Are singers more prone to LPR? What are the best tests? Mark Watson and Jane Shaw tell us more. Laryngopharyngeal reflux (LPR: the backflow of...

"A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread, The night we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head"

It’s true, the UK’s premier ENT event has come around quickly this time. So, who better to ‘poke awake’ for an article on the ethos and culture of Birmingham UK, BACO 2020 venue, than the erudite Chris Potter, who’s been...

Staying safe during endoscopic ear surgery

There is growing interest in using rigid endoscopes rather than traditional operative microscopes to perform transcanal middle ear surgery. Rigid endoscopy provides a high resolution, wide-angle view of the tympanic cavity through minimally invasive surgical portals. In this article, Elliott...

Acoustic shock: definitions and clinical aspects

Acoustic shock, a previously little-known and poorly understood clinical entity, came to the public’s attention in 2019 due to a high-profile legal case of a musician at the Royal Opera House. In this fascinating article, Andrew Parker and William Parker...

Sound Seekers: audiology in the developing world

Kavita Prasad, the current CEO of Soundseekers, is an inspirational woman in a leadership role within the audiology world. Here, she gives us an overview of the scope of the charity and the ways in which they improve the lives...

The benefits of mindfulness for tinnitus

Mindfulness-based psychological therapy for tinnitus has, in recent times, been the subject of well-designed clinical research that demonstrated impressive benefits. Dr Liz Marks guides us through this field, and advocates for better access and availability of these techniques. Mindfulness can...

The role of prediction and gain in tinnitus

Dr Will Sedley is a Clinical Academic Neurologist who has done groundbreaking work in the field of tinnitus mechanisms. Here, he introduces and explains the concepts of prediction and of gain as they relate to troublesome tinnitus. This article focuses...