Two hearing aids beat one for age-related loss, but not by a clear margin

The edition in brief

A single-blinded randomised trial at two US centres assigned 275 adults aged 50 or over with age-related hearing loss and little prior hearing aid use to one or two receiver-in-the-canal aids. Both groups improved on the Abbreviated Profile of Hearing Aid Benefit at three months; bilateral fitting gave about 5 points more benefit (95% CI 1.8 to 8.8), a statistically clear difference that the authors say may not be clinically meaningful. A US database study of 277,187 ENT operations found 90-day venous thromboembolism in 0.63% overall, but 6.1% after free tissue transfer, 4.4% after lateral skull base surgery and 3.1% after cricopharyngeal myotomy and anterior skull base surgery, with prior VTE the strongest risk factor. A matched cohort of 1,064 head and neck free flap patients found preoperative cannabis use associated with more prolonged opioid use and gastrostomy dependence. A 354-patient industry device registry reported symptom improvement in about three-quarters of people after nasal cryotherapy for chronic rhinitis, without serious adverse events, but had no control group.