Twenty-four patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the tongue were treated with 5,000 cGy to 6,500 cGy pre-operative irradiation. Surgery usually consisted of resection of the tongue, possibly the floor of mouth, and modified or radical neck dissection. Musculocutaneous flaps for reconstruction were used in three cases and a forearm flap in one case. Despite the high radiation dose, no major difficulties were encountered at surgery or during the convalescence period, except for one osteoradionecrosis of the mandible, which was successfully treated by microvascular osteomyocutaneous grafting. Residual carcinoma was seen on histological examination of the excised tissue in 9 out of 18 (50 percent) patients who received ≥6,000 cGy, and in 4 out of 6 (67 percent) patients who received about 5,000 cGy tumour dose. The 2-year crude survival rate was 65 percent. The data suggest that high dose pre-operative irradiation is feasible and does not compromise surgical treatment.

Fifty patients were included in a single blind study to evaluate the effectiveness of ephedrine-naphazoline (0.5 and 0.125 per cent respectively) nasal spray as against nasal packing with lignocaine (4 per cent) and adrenaline solution (1:50,000).

Fifteen Japanese patients with Wegener's granulomatosis (WG) were evaluated according to their lymphocyte subset abnormalities. Two colour immunofluorescent flow cytometry was used to distinguish the lymphocyte subset alterations. WG group showed a decrease in the percentage of CD4+ cells and the increase of CD8 + cells. Within the NK cell family, the functionally unidentified CD8 +57 + cells were markedly elevated. The disproportion of thelymphocyte subsets (CD4 +↓ CD8 +57 +↑) were similar to those of Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) and AIDS relating complexes (ARC). To assesssilent infection of Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) wasdone for all patients to selectively amplify specific HIV proviral DNA sequences in peripheral blood mononuclear cells, HIV-1 proviral DNA was not found in any patients but these changes of WG might suggest a possible adaptive response to unknown viral infection.

A case of fistulae in the inner canthus arising from the ethmoidal air cell sinuses is presented.

This type of complication is very rare, and to the best of our knowledge no similar case has been reported in the literature.

Clinical findings, imaging, pathology and treatment are presented and discussed.

Life-threatening upper airway obstruction can be caused by tonsillopharyngitis secondary to infectious mononucleosis (IM). The administration of corticosteroids, emergency tracheostomy and acute tonsillectomy have been advocated as ways of managing this problem. In a series of 25 patients admitted over a five-year period with IM, 15 were judged to have symptoms severe enough to warrant the administration of corticosteroids. Six of these 15 patients had little improvement in their condition and thus underwent acute tonsillectomy. There were no significant complications of this surgery. A further three patients who received corticosteroids required tonsillectomy for recurrent tonsillitis later in the study period. By contrast, only one of the ten patients who did not receive corticosteroids subsequently required tonsillectomy. Acute tonsillectomy is of value in selected cases of IM tonsillopharyngitis. It may decrease the morbidity of recurrent tonsillitis after IM, in addition to averting the immediate risk of respiratory obstruction.

The bedside assessment of dysphagia may be difficult, due to the inability to witness the act of swallowing directly. The milk test described in this paper gives a good assessment of swallowing, is cheap and easily portable and allows an instant decision to be made without recourse to special investigations.

Topical antibiotic preparations are widely prescribed in the treatment of infected mastoid cavities with no knowledge of the distribution of the preparation within the cavity. This study ascertains the distribution of drop and spray preparations within mastoid cavities and suggests methods of delivery to maximize coverage.

A case of an unilateral sensorineural hearing loss of sudden onset, due to an osteoma in the internal auditory canal is presented. As far as the authors are aware an osteoma at this site associated with a hearing loss occuring within a few hours has not previously been reported.

Four regimens of prophylactic antibiotics were utilized in 122 consecutive patients of stages III and IV carcinoma of the upper aero-digestive tract undergoing major resections in a randomized single-blind study. Ampicillin, gentamicin, cephalexin and metronidazole were used in different combinations for periods of 5 or 10 days. A cephalexin-metronidazole protocol for 10 days was associated with lowest post-operative infection rate. Oral-oropharyngeal resection and use of pectoralis major myocutaneous flap were the most important factors contributing to infection.

Cerebellar haemangioblastomata and angiomata of the retina are the most common vascular tumours seen in von Hippel-Lindau disease. A definite association between this condition and choroid plexus tumour has not been described previously and its presentation as a middle ear mass is unique.

A review was made of 12 cases of penetrating injuries to the oropharynx seen at Musashino Red Cross Hospital during the period from 1984 to 1988, and their records were compared with those of past cases with similar injuries reported in a survey for the period between 1949 and 1959. Most of the patients were children under the age of four and were injured when they fell with a sharp-edged object in the mouth. Penetrating injuries to the oropharynx occasionally cause severe complications, including retropharyngeal abscess and mediastinitis. This type of injury should be called a ‘pencil injury’.

Methods of evaluating adenoidal size pre-operatively are controversial. Symptoms and clinical evaluation have been both advocated and condemned. Depending on the methodology, measurement of the radiological adenoidal shadow has been difficult to correlate with the clinical patency of the nasopharyngeal airway and to the actual size of the removed adenoid.

Four different methods were used to measure the adenoidal size on 74 radiographs. The methods were evaluated against the degree to which the adenoids obstructed the nasopharynx on flexible endoscopy of the postnasal space. Obstructive symptomatology was also evaluated against the degree of obstruction.

The radiological method that best correlated to the endoscopic findings was that of Cohen and Konak (1985). However, obstructive symptomatology had the overall highest correlation to endoscopic findings.

A retrospective study of the complications of treatment with the carbon dioxide (CO2) laser of 17 patients diagnosed to be suffering from recurrent laryngeal papillomatosis is presented. No immediate complications occurred except one case of laryngospasm and failure to intubate during anaesthesia leading to hypoxic encephalopathy. Three patients were completely free from disease and complications. Another patient was free from laryngeal lesions but developed a papilloma in the right tonsillar pillar. Five other patients showed one or more multiple sites of involvement in addition to the larynx. Laryngeal scarring developed in ten patients. Six patients (35.29 percent) developed scarring as anterior glottic webs while in two scarring (11.7 percent) occurred as posterior glottic webs. One developed scarring in the supraglottic region. The remaining one had scarring in both the glottic and supraglottic regions. One patient developed tracheal scarring necessitating laryngo-tracheal separation. Two patients were psychologically disturbed during treatment requiring psychiatric consultation and therapy.

A 69-year-old man presented with a three-month history of otalgia and tenderness of the right ear and a one-week history of a painful right parotid swelling. Examination revealed granulation tissue in the right ear canal with normal looking tympanic membranes and a parotid abscess. Repeated biopsies from the ear canal and parotid showed non-specific inflammation. Repeated cultures from both areas grew Ps. aeruginosa. The patient's condition improved following three weeks of intensive treatment for malignant otitis externa only to relapse five weeks after the end of treatment. He received a second course, only to improve temporarily. He developed a right facial nerve palsy five weeks after he was first seen, followed four months later by palsies of all cranial nerves except the olfactory, before dying, seven months after his first appointment.

The radiological, histological and post-mortem findings are discussed.

A recent innovation in the technique of tracheostomy is now available as a commercial kit. A standard tracheostomy tube is inserted using a guidewire and dilator as in the Seldinger technique. The kit was used in nine cases in a unit with a head and neck oncology interest. Two failures were experienced but no serious or fatal complications. The technique is limited when applied to necks which are not anatomically ‘ideal’, and hence will have application in head and neck surgery only after careful patient selection

Tonsillectomy as an outpatient or same day-stay procedure is becoming increasingly popular. A retrospective study was performed on 1,049 children who underwent tonsillectomy and adenotonsillectomy either with guillotine or dissection with snare method. The dissection method was performed both under general anaesthesia and with local anaesthesia, but the guillotine method was performed only with local anaesthesia. Generally, bleeding control required no special intervention in the guillotine method but haemostasis was achieved by ligation and electrocauterization in one-third of the patients in the dissection group operated under general anaesthesia. The greatest percentage of haemorrhage in both methods occurred within the first four post-operative hours. There was a 1.8 per cent incidence of severe reactive haemorrhage required surgical intervention in the dissection group operated under general anaesthesia, but there was no such case in the guillotine group.

The results of this study show that in carefully selected children guillotine tonsillectomy with local anaesthesia is a safe, time saving and cost-effective procedure.

A 40-year-old woman presented with a nodule over the tragus of the right ear. A biopsy was initially reported as showing non-specific inflammation. In view of the persistence of the lesion, the histological material was reviewed, leading to revision of the diagnosis to Rosai-Dorfman disease, a diagnosis further confirmed by immunoreactivity of the histiocytes for s-100 protein. This case represented the extranodal form of Rosai-Dorfman disease in the absence of lymph node involvement.

The technique of infra red coagulation is well suited to the destruction of superficial blood vessels in the skin and/or mucosal surfaces. A method is described here for the destruction of resistant bleeding telangiectasia of the palate and lip in Osier-Weber-Rendu syndrome.

We describe a method for continuous measurement of end-tidal carbon dioxide concentration during jet insufflation anaesthesia for microlaryngeal surgery. This increases the safety of the technique by allowing closer monitoring of inspired and expired gases during anaesthesia

Isolated nasopharyngeal tuberculosis is a rare disease with very few cases having been reported in recent years. We report a case presenting in the United Kingdom with unilateral otalgia and otorrhoea.