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Background: Detailed investigations of the stapedial muscle (SM) in congenital aural atresia (CAA) patients have yet to be adequately conducted.Objectives: To assess image variations in the mastoid...

To assess the efficacy of the Eustachian Tube Dysfunction Questionnaire (ETDQ-7) for patulous Eustachian tube (PET) patients.A prospective survey of medical records identified 36 patients and 47 ears with PET, and 15 patients and 15 ears as control. The ETDQ-7, patulous Eustachian tube handicap inventory-10 (PHI-10) and Likert scale were evaluated. PET patients were divided into two groups based on severity of symptoms using the PHI score.The Cronbach α value of the PET group was 0.765. The average total score of the ETDQ-7 in the control group was 7.6 ± 1.1 and 22.5 ± 10.0 in the PET group (p .01). No correlation was found between ETDQ-7 and Likert scale (r = 0.248, p = .09). The average total score of the ETDQ-7 in the mild or moderate PET group was 19.9 ± 9.0 and 25.3 ± 11.1 in the severe PET group and this was not statistically different (p = .08).The highest ETDQ-7 score was also observed in PET patients and in ET dysfunction patients. These findings necessitate careful discrimination between ET dysfunction and PET in balloon dilation Eustachian tuboplasty (BET) based on ETDQ-7.

Conventional endoscopic sinus surgery (CESS) is useful for frontal mucoceles. A patient with short anterior-posterior distance and bone thickening may need an axillary flap, Draf type IIb, or Draf type III procedure.To present outcomes of frontal mucoceles treated with CESS and predict risk factors for poor outcomes to help define surgical indications.A consecutive clinical series was reviewed retrospectively. The authors performed CESS without agger nasi resection (Draf type IIa) for 13 frontal sinus mucoceles in 12 patients between October 2011 and July 2013. Patient age, sex, blood eosinophil count, history of operation and co-existence of acute infection were compared. For the condition of the frontal sinus, anterior-posterior distance and width of frontal recess, bone thickening of the frontal recess, bone absorption due to continuous pressure by mucocele and anatomy of the frontal recess was noted.All operations were done without a navigation system. The post-operative course was uneventful in all 12 patients, and all symptoms gradually receded. Among 13 mucoceles, one frontal sinus (7.7%) closed during follow-up.

Conclusion: The visual outcomes of endoscopic treatment of optic neuropathy are favorable. However, no specific prognostic factor was associated with good outcome. Objective: To investigate visual outcomes of patients with optic neuropathy caused by paranasal mucocele or sinusitis. Methods: The clinical course in 38 patients with rhinogenic optic neuropathy was investigated retrospectively. All patients underwent endoscopic sinus surgery and ophthalmologists measured preoperative and postoperative visual acuities. Results: Visual acuity completely recovered in 31 patients and partially in 2 patients, and did not recover in 5 patients. Age, sex, sinus involved (ethmoid or sphenoid), preoperative visual acuity, abnormal fundus findings, duration of symptoms, steroid use, and coexistence of diabetes mellitus showed no significant correlation with full recovery.

Sound localization in subjects with chronic otitis media (COM) was examined before and soon after ear surgery by means of virtual sound presented by headphones, sound being synthesized based on the head-related transfer functions (HRTFs) in a normal subject. The localization ability in COM patients was usually worse than that in normal subjects, but was better than expected when compared with cases of acute loss. On the other hand, the effects of hearing improvement on localization ability observed in COM patients were smaller than those of simulated acute hearing loss achieved by earplugs in normal subjects. This seems to suggest that the localization cues in patients with chronic hearing loss are different from those under normal conditions.

A new portable digital hearing aid referred to as CLAIDHA (Compensate for Loudness by Analyzing Input-signal Digital Hearing Aid), which employs frequency-dependent amplitude compression based on narrow-band loudness compensation, was clinically evaluated in 159 subjects with hearing loss. The results of speech tests revealed better intelligibility compared with the subject's own hearing aids; the advantage of using CLAIDHA in daily life was also indicated by the results of a questionnaire completed by the subjects. In about 64% of the subjects with a flat, gradually sloping type of hearing loss, CLAIDHA was satisfactorily adopted for daily use. However, in the subjects with a steeply sloping type of hearing loss and subjects with losses mainly at high and low frequencies, with near-normal mid-frequency hearing. this loudness compensation scheme seems to be slightly less effective.

The effects of carnauba wax addition on the physical state of palm kernel oil-in-water emulsions were investigated. The oil-in-water emulsion (40 wt% oil + 60 wt% aqueous phase) kept the liquid state at 25°C irrespective of the presence or absence of carnauba wax in the oil phase. The emulsion containing the wax transformed from the liquid state to the solid state by shearing after storage for 20 h at 4°C, although the liquid-solid transition was not observed for the emulsion not containing the wax upon the same treatment. The viscoelasticity of the solid emulsions was demonstrated by small-deformation mechanical testing. Analysis of flow behavior of the emulsions showed that the change in physical properties of the emulsion containing the wax at 4°C was caused by the shearing at a low shear rate, around 50 s−1–100 s−1. According to the transition from the liquid state to the solid state of the emulsion containing the wax, the aggregation of oil droplets was found to occur to a large extent. The results o...

We re-examined Shlyakhter's analysis of the Sm data in Oklo. With a special care of minimizing contamination due to the inflow of the isotope after the end of the reactor activity, we confirmed that his result on the time-variability of the fine-structure constant, $|\dot{\alpha}/\alpha |\lsim 10^{-17}{\rm y}^{-1}$, was basically correct. In addition to this upper bound, however, we obtained another result that indicates a different value of $\alpha$ 2 billion years ago. We add comments on the recent result from QSO's., Comment: 3 pages, 1 figure, presented at Int. Conf. on Nuclear Data for Science and Technology, ND2001, 7-12 October, 2001, Tsukuba, Japan

It is not clear why blood pressure rises with age in civilized countries. We examined the relationship between alcohol consumption, obesity, family history of hypertension and blood pressures at medical checkups in 534 male office workers, aged 20 to 40. The results in two age groups, 20-30 and 31-40, are as follows. Those who drank heavily (greater than 60 ml of ethanol) the previous night and/or habitual heavy drinkers (greater than 60 ml/day) had the highest blood pressure. Obese workers had higher blood pressure. Subjects with a family history of hypertension had higher blood pressure. The frequencies of heavy drinkers and obesity were higher in the group aged 31 to 40 than in the other group. These factors might contribute to the blood pressure elevation with age. 5) A histogram of the first readings of systolic blood pressure showed a bimodal distribution only in persons with a family history of hypertension.