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Neurological idiopathic disease: a shared journey for NASA and medicine

Whilst Southampton can’t really be described as an extreme environment, experiments carried out in the city have certainly been taken out of this world. Robert Marchbanks discusses one of the associations between Southampton, The International Space Station and tympanic membrane...

Hearables: in-ear sensing devices for recording of physiological signals

Colver Ken Howe Ne, Jameel Muzaffar and Manohar Bance discuss the potential of hearable systems to monitor physiological signals (e.g. from brain or heart, blood pressure, body temperature) unobtrusively. Such adaptations require high-quality sensors and sophisticated de-noising signal processing on...

Audiological management of autistic children

Philippa James and Lucy Shiels explain the development of the ‘Autism Listening Clinics’, highlighting a recommended clinical approach for audiologists, the importance of remote microphone technology and sharing some wonderful caregiver experiences. Auditory challenges in autistic children Autism spectrum disorder...

A new approach to workplace hearing conservation

The traditional approach to managing workplace noise has failed - how can we better protect our nation’s hearing using smart hearing protection? Occupational noise-induced hearing loss (ONIHL) is the most common occupational health condition in the world and the most...

What you need to know about recent advances in genetics of hearing loss in the newborn

Identifying the underlying genetic cause of hearing loss in newborns can improve dramatically the early diagnosis and appropriate intervention. Hearing loss is the most common sensory disorder at birth, affecting approximately two out of 1000 newborns [1]. Congenital impaired hearing...

Robotic assisted orbital surgery (RAOS) – a novel approach to orbital malignancy surgery

Robotic technology in ENT surgery has been used in certain areas of head and neck cancer care but, in this article, we hear of an exciting development from the team at Guy’s & St Thomas’. Advances in surgical robotic technology...

Improving cochlear-implant performance in the short- and medium-term

Can bespoke cochlear implant programming strategies reduce the variability seen in patient performance with an implant? Bob Carlyon reviews the current situation and gives us a glimpse of the future. Although many cochlear implant (CI) patients understand speech well in...

Discovery in the genetics of complex disease: Otitis media

Otitis media (OM), a common disease of childhood, is considered to be a complex trait with multiple genetic and environmental factors expected to contribute to a child’s risk of developing recurrent acute OM (rAOM; ≥3 episodes in 6 months or...

Tone deafness and perfect pitch

If you think you are tone deaf, do not despair. Singing tuition should help but it is probably too late to hope to develop perfect pitch. Consultant otolaryngologist and keen musician, Chris Aldren, discusses the complex and fascinating subject of...

Endoscopic middle ear surgery for cholesteatoma treatment

A critical question when any new technique is proposed is ‘does it work?’ In this article Daniele Marchioni and Davide Soloperto discuss the success rates of endoscopic ear surgery for cholesteatoma. Introduction Surgical management of cholesteatoma is still a controversial...