Infectious complications of pediatric cochlear implants are highly influenced by otitis media.

Objective: Determine the incidence of ear infections in cochlear implant patients, evaluate the contribution of otitis media to complications, describe the bacteriology of otitis media in the cochlear implant population, the treatment provided at our center, and the long term outcome.

Methods: Data collected included age at implantation, history of otitis media or ear tubes, etiology of hearing loss, inner ear anatomy, postoperative infections, time to infection, route of antibiotic administration, and interventions for infections. Categories of infection were acute otitis media, otitis media with effusion, tube otorrhea, meningitis, scalp cellulitis, and infection at the implant site.

Chronic rhinosinusitis: the rationale for current treatments.

Chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) is a broad clinical syndrome linked by mucosal inflammation. Primary treatment modalities are corticosteroids and antibiotics with surgery an option for failures, but the level of supporting evidence is generally low. The primary reason is that CRS is a symptom complex and not a specific disease.

Epidemiology of unilateral sensorineural hearing loss with universal newborn hearing screening.

Objectives/hypothesis: Compare the epidemiology of pediatric unilateral sensorineural hearing loss before and after implementation of universal newborn hearing screening in Missouri.

Study Design: Inception cohort.

Methods: Charts of 134 children born between January 1, 1990 and December 31, 2007, diagnosed with unilateral sensorineural hearing loss at a single institution in Missouri were reviewed to determine the effects of universal newborn hearing screening on age of detection and etiology of hearing loss.

Iatrogenic esophageal perforation in patients with head and neck cancer: evaluation of the SEER-Medicare database.

Objective: 1) Determine rate of iatrogenic esophageal perforation in head and neck cancer patients. 2) Identify risk factors for perforation. 3) Determine effect of perforation on mortality.

A practical guide for understanding confidence intervals and P values.

The 95 percent confidence interval about the mean demarcates the range of values in which the mean would fall if many samples from the universal parent population were taken. In other words, if the same observation, experiment, or trial were done over and over with a different sample of subjects, but with the same characteristics as the original sample, 95 percent of the means from those repeated measures would fall within this range. This gives a measure of how confident we are in the original mean.