13 papers
Otolaryngology focuses on the complex interplay between the ears, nose, and throat, covering everything from hearing loss and balance disorders to sleep apnea and head and neck cancers. This vital medical specialty ensures our ability to hear, breathe, and speak, yet the rapid pace of new discoveries can often feel overwhelming for those outside the field.
Gist.Science bridges this gap by processing every new preprint uploaded to medRxiv within this category. We transform dense, technical research into accessible plain-language summaries alongside detailed technical breakdowns, making cutting-edge findings available to patients, students, and clinicians alike. Below are the latest papers in otolaryngology, freshly summarized to help you stay informed on the latest breakthroughs.
This study validates the LIS-N web-based prototype as a viable open-source alternative to the clinical standard CSL for remote voice monitoring, demonstrating excellent agreement for frequency-based acoustic features and longitudinal consistency while highlighting limitations in energy and perturbation measures due to hardware and software differences.
This prospective fMRI study demonstrates that functional septorhinoplasty induces significant neural plasticity in higher-order olfactory brain regions, such as the orbitofrontal cortex and frontal pole, in patients with persistent COVID-19-related olfactory dysfunction, supporting the mechanism that restoring nasal airflow drives central olfactory recovery.
This study demonstrates that current large language models fail to achieve inter-rater reliability comparable to medical professionals when extracting structured clinical information from ENT electronic health records, suggesting they are best suited for initial data extraction requiring human verification rather than autonomous clinical deployment.
This mixed-methods study protocol outlines a plan to evaluate and improve the sociodemographic diversity of participants in the BEARS virtual reality clinical trial for deaf children with bilateral cochlear implants by analyzing recruitment data, identifying barriers through qualitative research, and implementing targeted interventions to ensure the trial better represents the UK population.
This study employs a think-aloud protocol with 36 hearing-aid users to develop a qualitative framework that characterizes self-adjustment behaviors as a continuum between exploratory and anticipatory archetypes, thereby offering deeper insights into user decision-making processes and promoting greater ownership of hearing-aid personalization.
This study demonstrates that functional septorhinoplasty provides sustained 12-month improvements in olfactory function and nasal airflow for patients with persistent post-COVID-19 olfactory dysfunction, supported by histological evidence of preserved olfactory sensory neurons and regenerative capacity in the olfactory epithelium.
This paper outlines the protocol for a prospectively registered, multi-round modified Delphi study involving international experts and a patient advisory group to establish the first internationally endorsed clinical guidelines for assessing children with suspected olfactory dysfunction, addressing current gaps in detection and standardized practice.
This comparative study found that large language models generated responses to otologic patient queries that were longer, more empathetic, and more readable than those from verified physicians, suggesting their potential to enhance patient-centered communication when appropriately implemented.
This multi-population genome-wide association meta-analysis identifies shared and distinct genetic architectures between chronic rhinosinusitis and nasal polyps, revealing substantial shared liability while highlighting that immune-driven mechanisms play a more dominant role in nasal polyp heritability than epithelial factors.
This study demonstrates that SMELL-RS, a rapid, self-administered, and digital olfactory test, offers reliable and accurate assessment of smell dysfunction with significantly shorter completion times compared to traditional Sniffin' Sticks tests.