WITHDRAWN: Oral steroids for nasal polyps.

Review withdrawn from Issue 4, 2016. Replaced by new reviews 'Short‐course oral steroids alone for chronic rhinosinusitis' (Head 2016a) and 'Short‐course oral steroids as an adjunct therapy for chronic rhinosinusitis' (Head 2016b). The editorial group responsible for this previously published document have withdrawn it from publication.

Prospective technical validation and assessment of intra-tumour heterogeneity of a low density array hypoxia gene profile in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.

Background And Purpose: Tumour hypoxia is associated with a poor prognosis in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC), however there is no accepted method for assessing hypoxia clinically. We aimed to conduct a technical validation of a hypoxia gene expression signature using the TaqMan Low Density Array (TLDA) platform to investigate if this approach reliably identified hypoxic tumours.

Materials And Methods: Tumour samples (n=201) from 80 HNSCC patients were collected prospectively from two centres.

Importance of intracellular pH in determining the uptake and efficacy of the weakly basic chemotherapeutic drug, doxorubicin.

Low extracellular pH (pH(e)), that is characteristic of many tumours, tends to reduce the uptake of weakly basic drugs, such as doxorubicin, thereby conferring a degree of physiological resistance to chemotherapy. It has been assumed, from pH-partition theory, that the effect of intracellular pH (pH(i)) is symmetrically opposite, although this has not been tested experimentally. Doxorubicin uptake into colon HCT116 cells was measured using the drug's intrinsic fluorescence under conditions that alter pH(i) and pH(e) or pH(i) alone.

Oral steroids for nasal polyps.

Background: This is an update of a Cochrane Review first published in The Cochrane Library in Issue 1, 2007.Benign nasal polyps are lesions that arise from the mucosa of the nasal cavity or one or more of the nasal sinuses. The presenting symptoms are nasal obstruction, watery anterior rhinorrhoea (excessive nasal secretions) or mucopurulent postnasal drip (or both), hyposmia and anosmia (reduced or absent sense of smell) with a concomitant alteration in taste and infrequently pain over the dorsum of the nose, forehead and cheeks.

Spectral clustering of microarray data elucidates the roles of microenvironment remodeling and immune responses in survival of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.

Purpose: To identify functionally related prognostic gene sets for head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) by unsupervised statistical analysis of microarray data.

Patients And Methods: Microarray analysis was performed on 14 normal oral epithelium and 71 HNSCCs from patients with outcome data. Spectral clustering (SC) analysis of the data set identified multiple vectors representing distinct aspects of gene expression heterogeneity between samples.

hsa-mir-210 is a marker of tumor hypoxia and a prognostic factor in head and neck cancer.

Background: Hypoxia is an important mechanism of treatment resistance in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC). MicroRNAs are short noncoding RNAs that regulate multiple mRNAs and are frequently dysregulated in cancer. The authors have investigated the role of 3 microRNAs, including the hypoxia-induced hsa-miR-210, as potential markers of hypoxia or prognosis.

The role of carbonic anhydrase 9 in regulating extracellular and intracellular ph in three-dimensional tumor cell growths.

We have studied the role of carbonic anhydrase 9 (CA9), a cancer-associated extracellular isoform of the enzyme carbonic anhydrase in multicellular spheroid growths (radius of approximately 300 microm) of human colon carcinoma HCT116 cells. Spheroids were transfected with CA9 (or empty vector) and imaged confocally (using fluorescent dyes) for both intracellular pH (pH(i)) and pH in the restricted extracellular spaces (pH(e)). With no CA9 expression, spheroids developed very low pH(i) (approximately 6.

Prevention of venous thromboembolism in surgical patients with breast cancer.

Background: No randomized trial has yet studied venous thromboembolism (VTE) prophylaxis in patients undergoing surgery for breast cancer.

Methods: Relevant articles were identified using Medline searches. Secondary articles were identified from the reference lists of key papers.

Role of hypoxia-inducible factor-1alpha as a cancer therapy target.

Hypoxia occurs in solid tumours due to a mismatch between tumour growth and angiogenesis. Hypoxia in solid tumours is associated with an aggressive phenotype and resistance to radiation therapy and chemotherapy leading to poor patient prognosis. Hypoxia-inducible factor-1 (HIF-1) is a transcription factor, which is activated in response to intratumoural hypoxia and as a result of genetic alterations that activate oncogenes and inactivate tumour suppressor genes.

Oral steroids for nasal polyps.

Background: Benign nasal polyps are lesions that arise from the mucosa of the nasal cavity or one or more of the nasal sinuses. The presenting symptoms of nasal polyps are nasal obstruction, watery anterior rhinorrhoea (excessive nasal secretions) or mucopurulent postnasal drip (or both), hyposmia and anosmia (reduced or absent sense of smell) with a concomitant alteration in taste and infrequently pain over the dorsum of the nose, forehead and cheeks. The main aim of treatment is to relieve these symptoms.

Patient satisfaction with NHS elective tonsillectomy outsourced to the private sector under the Patient Choice Programme.

Rationale, Aims And Objectives: An interim goal of the NHS 'Extending choice for patients' initiative was that, by 2004, patients who had been on the NHS waiting list for elective surgery for 6 months were provided with a choice of staying on the waiting list or being treated faster by opting to have their operation with an alternative provider. The aim of this study was to examine patient satisfaction in a cohort of patients who travelled out-of-region to undergo routine tonsillectomy performed by an NHS consultant at a private hospital.

Method: A questionnaire survey was conducted of adult patients undergoing elective tonsillectomy in 2002 and 2003 at The Hampshire Clinic, Basingstoke, UK.

Partial middle turbinectomy by nasotracheal intubation.

Partial middle turbinate avulsion is a rare complication of nasotracheal intubation. Patients usually experience a brisk hemorrhage at the time of injury. Postoperatively, some patients develop a unilateral nasal obstruction, while others are asymptomatic.

B-cell lymphoma of the larynx in a patient with rheumatoid arthritis.

We report a case of B-cell lymphoma with the larynx as the primary site of presentation in a rheumatoid arthritis patient previously treated with methotrexate. Primary non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) of the larynx is rare. There may be an increased risk of lymphoma in patients with rheumatoid arthritis, with an even higher risk in those patients treated with methotrexate.

How we do it: blood contamination during management of epistaxis--awareness, utilization and availability of barrier protection.

There is a significant risk of blood contamination during the non-surgical management of epistaxis. Contamination beyond gloves happens in 55% of cases and the contamination risk to eyes as high as 18%. There is a lack of awareness and a majority of ENT doctors underestimate this risk.

Smoking causes a dose-dependent increase in granulocyte-bound L-selectin.

The mechanism by which cigarette smoking promotes atherosclerosis remains unclear but may involve the endothelium and leukocytes. We postulated a direct acute effect of cigarette smoking on the endothelium and granulocytes by measuring granulocyte expression of L-selectin (flow cytometry) and serum L- and E-selectin (ELISA) before and after smoking in 12 smokers with peripheral vascular disease (claudicants) and 12 otherwise healthy controls. Mean (S.