The masquerade of vasculitis: head and neck diagnosis and management.

Wegener's granulomatosis and forms of giant cell arteritis result from vasculitis and masquerade with symptoms of common head and neck disease entities. Recognition of the manifestations of vasculitis can be made early in the disease course and confirmed pathologically, allowing effective therapy. Current therapy of Wegener's granulomatosis with Cytoxin and Imuran and steroids for giant cell arteritis frequently results in reversal of head and neck involvement, prevention of systemic disease, and prolonged survival.

Client centred hypnotherapy in the management of tinnitus--is it better than counselling?

The aim of this study was to assess whether client centred hypnotherapy (CCH) which required three sessions with a trained therapist was superior to a single counselling session in reducing the impact of tinnitus. Patients were randomly allocated to receive either counselling (n = 42) or CCH (n = 44). The outcome measures were: tinnitus loudness match, subjective tinnitus symptom severity score, trend of linear analogue scale, request for further therapy and whether the patient had an impression of improvement in their tinnitus after treatment. CCH was no better than counselling in reducing the impact of tinnitus using the three quantative measures of tinnitus, and requests for further follow up. The only significant difference between the two therapies was that 20 (45.5 per cent) of the CCH group reported a general sense of improvement compared to six (14.3 per cent) in the counselling group, this is significant p < 0.01. The study did not demonstrate whether this was a genuine hypnotic effect or simply a response to the additional attention from the therapist.