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In conversation with Prof Helge Rask-Andersen: on cell regeneration and treatment of human deafness

Helge Rask-Andersen, head of the inner ear research laboratory at the University of Uppsala in Sweden, has many achievements to his name. He was made an Honorary Member of ENT UK earlier this year. Gerry O’Donoghue caught up with him...

Sniffing out the evidence – COVID-19 and loss of sense of smell and taste

Louis Pasteur once observed: “In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind.” Professor Hopkins was certainly prepared when a few anecdotes of smell problems started to accumulate early in the pandemic’s course. Post-viral olfactory loss is nothing...

The ear-brain connection in cochlear implant users: learning to listen again

While the cochlear implant (CI) has been a tremendous success in restoring hearing to deaf individuals, the implantation outcome still varies across CI users [1]. Some demographic factors, such as duration of deafness, and peripheral factors, such as electrode placement,...

Silent crisis: the exodus of hearing healthcare professionals from the Philippines

The migration of Filipino audiologists and otolaryngologists abroad is worsening the shortage of hearing specialists. Improving local conditions is vital to retaining talent. As ear and hearing healthcare professionals practising in the Philippines, we have seen the struggle in keeping...

Medical and surgical management of performing vocalists

Dr Steven Zeitels is widely recognised as the foremost laryngologist of his generation. He has been at the forefront of innovation for 25 years, and has treated innumerable high-profile singers, most recently Sam Smith and Adele. Here, he gives us...

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...

Secrets of the listening brain: what measuring the brain can tell us about hearing aid use and more

In a typical audiology clinic, on any given day, a person is waiting to see an audiologist to get a hearing aid (HA). It might have taken over 10 years to get to this point of considering a hearing aid(s)...

Communicating with patients in 
‘Plain English’

Physicians have long been accused of using unnecessarily complicated language and impenetrable jargon as a way of maintaining their status, prestige and high earnings-potential, bamboozling the public and excluding them from meaningful discussion as part of what George Bernard Shaw...

Timing of surgery in chronic rhinosinusitis: does it matter?

While many patients with chronic rhinosinusitis respond to medical treatment, some do not. The next step for these patients is surgery, but how soon should this be offered? Sooner rather than later seems to be the answer, as Claire Hopkins...