Potential Increased Long-Term Risk of Diseases with Tonsillectomy and Adenoidectomy

The New York Times published a story on June 7, 2018 publicizing a Danish 2018 study that suggested that children under 9 years old undergoing tonsillectomy and/or adenoidectomy are at increased long-term risk of respiratory, infectious, and allergic diseases. (Adults undergoing this surgery were not investigated.)

All prior studies evaluating for any adverse affects from surgical intervention looked more at any unusual immunological changes after surgery; these studies did not show any obvious…

Turn Apple AirPods Into Hearing Aids with iOS12 using iPhone

Given how pervasive iPhones and AirPods are, Apple has taken a committed step to helping those who have difficulty with hearing things clearly. With its new upcoming iOS12 software update later this year, individuals who own both an iPhone and AirPods will be able to turn the AirPods into a hearing amplification device through its new Live Listen feature.

Please note that the title of this blog article is a bit of a misnomer. Technically, this would not be a hearing aid, but an amplification de…

Tonsillectomy WITHOUT General Anesthesia Using Only Local Anesthesia

I always thought that tonsillectomy can only be performed under general anesthesia. I was wrong... In some countries even now, awake tonsillectomy is routinely performed using only local anesthesia. There has even been some papers written on this topic which I was not aware of until now.

According to one 2018 paper, a local anesthetic tonsillectomy without general anesthesia is performed the following way:
...cold steel method of dissection, using tonsillar snare at the inferior tonsillar pole…

What Stage Cancer Do I Have?

When a patient is informed that they have cancer, one of the very first question they ask is "What stage cancer do I have?" Even if the patient does not fully understand what staging actually means, most will understand that the worse the stage, the worse the survival outcome (stage 1 being the best and stage 4 being the worst).

So how does a physician come up with the cancer stage for cancers of the mouth and throat? It actually does not involve a complicated algorithm in order to de…

Dr. Chang Referenced in ER Journal Article

It's nice to get noticed, even at the prestigious Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). Two emergency room physicians at this hospital published an article on how to manage bleeding after tonsillectomy and used photos that Dr. Chang took and published in his blog, "Bleeding After Tonsillectomy".

Although you need to get behind a paid firewall, you can certainly still read the abstract here and take a look at all the pictures used in the article including the two that Dr…

Odactra - Under the Tongue Immunotherapy for Dust Mite Allergy

The FDA formally approved Odactra, the fourth new sublingual allergy tablet to be sold in the United States that works the same way allergy shots do... but instead is dissolved under the tongue at home instead of a shot in the arm in a medical office. Odactra is specifically used in the treatment of dust mite allergy.

The other sublingual immunotherapy tablets currently available include:

• Ragwitek used to treat ragweed.
• Oralair and Grastek are two other sublingual tablets to treat grass al…