Detecting head and neck squamous carcinoma using a portable handheld electronic nose.

INTRODUCTION: Detecting volatile organic compounds in exhaled breath enables the diagnosis of cancer. We investigated whether a handheld version of an electronic nose is able to discriminate between patients with head and neck squamous cell cancer (HNSCC) and healthy controls. METHODS: Ninety-one patients with HNSCC and 72 controls exhaled through an e-nose. An artificial neural network based model was built to separate between HNSCC patients and healthy controls. Additionally, three models were created for separating between the oral, oropharyngeal, and glottic subsites respectively, and healthy controls. RESULTS: The results showed a diagnostic accuracy of 72% at a sensitivity of 79%, specificity of 63%, and area under the curve (AUC) of 0.75. Results for the subsites showed an AUC of 0.85, 0.82, and 0.83 respectively for oral, oropharyngeal, and glottic HNSCC. CONCLUSION: This feasibility study showed that this portable noninvasive diagnostic tool can differentiate between HNSCC patients and healthy controls.

Sound-localization performance of patients with single-sided deafness is not improved when listening with a bone-conduction device.

An increased number of treatment options has become available for patients with single sided deafness (SSD), who are seeking hearing rehabilitation. For example, bone-conduction devices that employ contralateral routing of sound (CROS), by transmitting acoustic bone vibrations from the deaf side to the cochlea of the hearing ear, are widely used. However, in some countries, cochlear implantation is becoming the standard treatment. The present study investigated whether CROS intervention, by means of a CROS bone-conduction device (C-BCD), affected sound-localization performance of patients with SSD. Several studies have reported unexpected moderate to good unilateral sound-localization abilities in unaided SSD listeners. Listening with a C-BCD might deteriorate these localization abilities because sounds are transmitted, through bone conduction to the contralateral normal hearing ear, and could thus interfere with monaural level cues (i.e. ambiguous monaural head-shadow cues), or with the subtle spectral localization cues, on which the listener has learned to rely on. The present study included nineteen SSD patients who were using their C-BCD for more than five months. To assess the use of the different localization cues, we investigated their localization abilities to broadband (BB, 0.5-20 kHz), low-pass (LP, 0.5-1.5 kHz), and high-pass filtered noises (HP, 3-20 kHz) of varying intensities. Experiments were performed in complete darkness, by measuring orienting head-movement responses under open-loop localization conditions. We demonstrate that a minority of listeners with SSD (5 out of 19) could localize BB and HP (but not LP) sounds in the horizontal plane in the unaided condition, and that a C-BCD did not deteriorate their localization abilities.

Detecting recurrent head and neck cancer using electronic nose technology: A feasibility study.

BACKGROUND: The aim of this feasibility study was to assess the diagnostic performance of an electronic nose (e-nose) as a noninvasive diagnostic tool in detecting locoregional recurrent and/or second (or third) primary head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) after curative treatment. METHODS: Using an e-nose (Aeonose, The eNose Company, Zutphen, The Netherlands), breath samples were collected from patients after curative treatment of an HNSCC with a locoregional recurrence or second (or third) primary tumor (N = 20) and from patients without evidence of recurrent disease (N = 20). Analyses were performed utilizing artificial neural networking based on patterns of volatile organic compounds. RESULTS: A diagnostic accuracy of 83% was observed in differentiating follow-up patients with locoregional recurrent or second (or third) primary HNSCC from those without evidence of disease. CONCLUSION: This study has demonstrated the feasibility of using an e-nose to detect locoregional recurrent and/or second (or third) primary HNSCC.

Treatment of Recurrent Eczematous External Otitis with Honey Eardrops: A Proof-of-Concept Study.

Eczematous external otitis is a chronic inflammatory disease and often difficult to treat. Our objective was to investigate the clinical effect and in vitro antibacterial potential of medical honey eardrops as treatment of eczematous external otitis. In a prospective study, 15 patients diagnosed with recurrent eczematous external otitis were treated with medical honey eardrops for 2 weeks. The following clinical outcomes were evaluated: visual analog scale of ear complaints, score of eczema, and eradication of bacterial infection. Furthermore, the antibacterial effect of honey eardrops against different bacterial strains was tested in vitro. Treatment resulted in less discomfort and itching and decreased signs of eczema, with high patient satisfaction and without adverse reactions. Honey eardrops showed a strong in vitro inhibitory activity against all tested strains but did not eradicate Staphylococcus aureus infection in vivo. The results of this preliminary study indicate a possible role of honey eardrops in eczematous ear disease.