Search

Physician illness

Getting in the zone, recognising our personal stress limits and looking after ourselves are vital components in our efforts to stay healthy advises Abbie Lane, after almost a generation of de-stressing others. They say a rugby player like Brian O’Driscoll...

The cochlear implant clinic multidisciplinary team meeting

The world’s first cochlear implant clinic was in Melbourne, where multichannel devices were designed by Graeme Clark at the beginning of the cochlear implant era. We are fortunate to hear from Claire Iseli and Rob Briggs, surgeon members of this...

Reflections on virtual teaching

In a situation where we cannot meet our students (whether they be medical professionals or non-medical), how do we maintain their education? Peter Samuel has been speaking to some colleagues on how they have risen to the challenge. The COVID-19...

Loss of smell after COVID-19: a view from the patient forums

Patient advocate, Chrissi Kelly, founder of AbScent, talks about how the pandemic has changed the way we think about smell loss. The high prevalence of chemosensory impairment as a result of the SARS-CoV-2 virus has shone a much-needed spotlight on...

Detecting cancer margins during robotic head and neck cancer surgery using ambient mass spectrometry

We have known about altered metabolism in cancer cells since Otto Warburg described it 97 years ago. But can we take advantage of this knowledge in curing cancer? Jim Higginson explains the value of smoke generated during cancer surgery. The...

Setting up a robotic surgical practice: view from India

Transoral robotic surgery has an established role in head and neck cancer surgery. But how easy is it to set up a service in a resource-constrained environment? Gouri Pantvaidya and Ameya Pai give us a view from the Indian subcontinent....

Tonsillitis and tonsillectomies: where do we go from Paradise?

Landmark Paper: Paradise JL, Bluestone CD, Bachman RZ, et al. Efficacy of tonsillectomy for recurrent throat infection in severely affected children – results of parallel randomized and nonrandomized clinical trials. N Engl J Med 1984;310(11):674-83. The Paradise paper on tonsillectomy...

Biologic therapies for chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyps: a new paradigm

Surgery for nasal polyposis has evolved significantly in the last 30 years, and now the medical management may be on the cusp of a revolution. Biologics using monoclonal antibodies to target specific immune pathways have introduced a paradigm shift in...

Intratympanic treatments for subjective idiopathic tinnitus

Direct application of medication into the ear is long established, going back as far as written records. In the modern era, greater understanding of aural anatomy revealed that drugs instilled in the middle ear could potentially diffuse into the cochlea...

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...

Prudent audiology

Introduction In January 2014, Professor Mark Drakeford, Minister for Health and Social Services, defined Prudent Healthcare as, “Healthcare that fits the needs and circumstances of patients and actively avoids wasteful care that is not to the patient’s benefit.” ‘Prudent’ healthcare...

Audiological and psychological consequences of single-sided deafness

The loss of sound input from one ear has a significant impact on our perception of our acoustic environment. This impact is compounded in adverse listening conditions. Rachel Knappett’s article explores the audiological impact of this hearing loss and the...