Search

Reducing the risk of Frey’s syndrome after parotidectomy – which methods are best?

Gustatory sweating or Frey’s syndrome is a well-recognised complication of parotid surgery. The reported incidence is highly variable, from 4% to 96%, with around 30% of patients reporting symptoms. A number of intraoperative techniques can be used to reduce the...

How do objective ratings of swallowing compare with patient-reported dysphagia QOL measures in the head and neck cancer population?

Swallowing may be assessed by a comprehensive battery of tools including instrumental/objective assessments, clinician-rated measures and patient-reported measures. The authors of this paper use secondary analysis to explore concordance between videofluoroscopy and a patient-reported dysphagia quality of life (QOL) measure....

Vestibular implantation: are we there yet?

The objectives of this review article were to ascertain, through a systematic literature review, device design, surgical approaches, objective and subjective outcomes as well as limitations of vestibular implantation (VI). Following an extensive systematic search using PRISMA guidelines, 21 studies...

Surgeon, Heal Thyself

Once a taboo topic, stress and psychological illness in doctors is now much more widely discussed. This is probably partly due to changing societal attitudes (with more acceptance of the importance of acknowledging mental illness) and changes amongst medics themselves,...

Adult Audiologic Rehabilitation – Third Edition

This book builds a vivid picture of adult audiologic rehabilitation in the past, present and future. It considers a holistic view of hearing rehabilitation and introduces new research and ideas which I hope will shape hearing services of the future....

Frequency Compression – is there a benefit?

The goal of this study was to investigate whether frequency compression (FC) hearing aids provide more benefit than conventional hearing aids. Twelve experienced hearing aid users 65-84 years of age with moderate to severe high frequency hearing loss wore the...

The right to choose: stories from the rare dementias

People with primary progressive aphasia (PPA) experience an insidious onset and gradual decline in language on a background of lesser or no cognitive impairment, hence a language-led dementia. There are three different PPA variants that correspond with three different clinical...

Parkinson’s humour: recognising social communication difficulties

Parkinson’s results in a progressive motor disease with symptoms including tremor, rigidity and bradykinesia. However, people with Parkinson’s also experience non-motor symptoms such as cognitive difficulties that can impact social communication, often due to their co-existing speech difficulties, auditory and...

Feel what you say: a framework to demonstrate the emotional response to aphasia is intertwined with the emotional toll

The authors start this paper by flagging a recent study demonstrating that speech and language therapists in clinical practice rarely have time to focus on emotional issues in relation to aphasia. Yet, people with aphasia describe the close relationship between...

Expectations and practice

Reading this paper is reassuring. It does not appear to be groundbreaking in its results but research can be as useful, if not more so, when it consolidates knowledge and helps unify the research base. This paper focuses on those...

Let’s talk brains: review of care pathways for communication management post brain tumour

One in five people with a brain tumour have speech and language difficulties such as aphasia – a language impairment that can result in difficulties using and understanding words and sentences and participating in conversations. This paper describes a scoping...