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Smoking causes cancer – so what’s new?

You may well ask what is the novel value of a paper looking at smoking habits in patients with confirmed head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC), but this paper highlights some pertinent points for clinical practice in the current...

Lymph node metastases in papillary thyroid cancer

This retrospective Korean cohort study looked at the risk factors associated with bilateral lateral lymph node metastases in patients with unilateral papillary thyroid cancer. There were 11 patients who met the inclusion criteria across an 11-year period from 2009 to...

Chronic rhinosinusitis – a pre-malignant condition?

Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is a relatively uncommon diagnosis in the West but is prevalent in Southeast Asia. Several factors have been established to be associated with a higher risk of developing NPC, including salted fish consumption, smoking, alcohol, and Epstein...

Darn it! It’s going to take longer to get good at stapes surgery!

Traditionally, it has been said the learning curve for a particular operation lies between 20 and 30 cases. In stapedotomy, a surgeon is deemed successful and perhaps competent if closure of the air-bone gap (ABG) is reached to within 10dB...

Childhood speech processing in background noise

Normal childhood development of the auditory systems involves mapping sounds to meaning and the neural coding of speech. Children are often subjected to adverse listening environments such as high levels of background noise. This paper aimed to delineate the effects...

Clinical assessment in OSA

This paper divides the assessment up into anatomical (nasal and oropharyngeal), endoscopic and imaging. It points out the salient features to look out for in OSA patients with regards the nasal valve and also oropharyngeal anatomy, with tonsil hypertrophy grading...

Stimulation for tinnitus

Tinnitus is known to be inhibited by stimulation of the auditory system by stimuli such as acoustical, electrical and magnetic. Residual inhibition (RI) is when tinnitus is temporarily eliminated for a period of time lasting seconds, minutes, up to hours...

Experience of the Sophono transcutaneous bone conduction system

This article is a frank discussion of the authors’ experience implanting these devices. The principle of the device is surgical implantation of a bilobed magnet within a bony well in the cranium (similar position to BAHA). The implant is a...

Hearing loss in the young and self-esteem

How can those involved in the care of children with hearing loss identify those at risk of low self-esteem? This study provides some guidance. Overall differences from hearing peers in terms of communication skills, physical appearance and social maturity place...

Reconstruction of the Head and Neck: A Defect-Oriented Approach

This is the second Thieme book on head and neck cancer by this author that follows on from Head and Neck Cancer: an Evidence-Based Team Approach four years ago. It is a well-structured, up-to-date book in a readable layout with...