Vitamin D halved recurrent positional vertigo in deficient patients over two years

The edition in brief

Recurrent benign paroxysmal positional vertigo is common, frustrating and usually managed with repeated repositioning manoeuvres. This double-blind placebo-controlled trial at two centres in Baghdad randomised 160 adults with confirmed idiopathic BPPV and serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D below 20 ng/mL to weekly cholecalciferol 10,000 IU or placebo for 24 months. Recurrence was consistently lower with supplementation at every timepoint: 15.0% against 35.0% at six months, and 27.5% against 55.0% at 24 months, a 50% relative reduction with a number needed to treat of 3.6. No hypercalcaemic episodes occurred and adherence exceeded 94% in both arms. A meta-analysis of 25 studies and 5,987 patients examined airway management after head and neck cancer reconstruction. Where elective tracheostomy was not performed, adverse airway events occurred in 10.3%. Floor-of-mouth tumours (odds ratio 5.96), oropharyngeal tumours (2.60), bilateral neck dissection (6.36) and higher ASA class (1.51) predicted those events. But tracheostomy itself was associated with more flap complications (odds ratio 2.15), more unplanned returns to theatre (1.73) and 5.86 days longer to oral feeding. A European Delphi consensus involving 25 laryngologists has approved 60 statements on office-based laryngology, covering indications, contraindications, technique, vocal fold augmentation and postprocedural care. Palatopharyngeal surgery without tonsillectomy reduced Epworth scores by 3.3 points and snoring intensity by 4.1 across 55 studies.