Deaf after nasopharyngeal radiotherapy? Cochlear implants still worked years later

The edition in brief

Today's ENT edition opens on children's tonsil surgery. A retrospective series of 1,734 intracapsular tonsillotomies with adenoidectomy found coblation took a median two minutes less than the microdebrider, with similar low rates of postoperative bleeding (about 1%) and revision; younger age was the main risk factor for revision. A US survey analysis found a simple handheld hearing screener gave hearing-loss prevalence estimates in adults aged 55 and over (54.8%) that matched pure-tone audiometry (54.5%), supporting screening tools where audiometry is not available. A review of 144 children with very severe obstructive sleep apnoea found preoperative cardiac workup abnormal in only 3 of 38 tested, all obese adolescents with AHI above 50. The pearl covers hearing surveillance after head and neck radiotherapy. The edition closes on a systematic review of 12 small studies (69 ears) of cochlear implantation after radiotherapy for nasopharyngeal carcinoma: 91% showed audiometric improvement and 96.5% had no postoperative complication, even after a mean of 6.5 years of profound deafness, which argues for routine audiological follow-up and timely referral.