Otolaryngologists increasingly must think about the cosmetic outcomes of patients undergoing head and neck surgery.

Neonates with younger gestational age and lower birth weight are more likely to fail extubation and to require earlier surgical airway intervention, according to an April 28 presentation by University of Texas Medical School, Houston, researchers at the American Society of Pediatric Otolaryngology program at the Combined Otolaryngology Spring Meeting.
In the past, almost all support for otolaryngology research was provided through the National Institute on Deafness and other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) or its parent institute, the National Institute on Neurological Diseases and Stroke (NINDS).
The publication of two Institute of Medicine (IOM) reports-To Err is Human: Building A Safer Health System in 1999 and Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century in 2001-served as a catalyst to increase awareness among health care professionals that the American health care system is beset by serious problems related to patient safety and medical errors.
Bone-anchored hearing aids (BAHA) provide many patients who can’t use standard hearing aids-for example, those with ear malformations or chronic infections-the potential to restore their hearing.
Philip Mark Brown, MD’s audiologist coworkers keep him apprised of the current state of the art regarding the available battery of audiologic tests.
“Despite increasing awareness among intensivists and respiratory therapists and more widespread use of low-pressure, high-volume cuffs, the incidence of tracheal tube cuff overinflation remains high in the contemporary American intensive care unit [ICU],” said Luc Morris, MD, from the Head and Neck Service in the Department of Otolaryngology at New York University School of Medicine during his scientific session presentation at the April 2007 meeting of the American Broncho-Esophagological Association at the Combined Otolaryngology Spring Meeting.
Executives, royalty, and even the indigent seeking the world’s best, most advanced medical care find it in the United States.
I was sued only once during my surgical career.
An important success story has been quietly taking place at the National Institutes of Health over the last decade, which bodes well for patient care, for science, and for the specialty.