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Since the introduction of uvulopalatopharyngoplasty (UVPP) life-threatening complications have been encountered. In our retrospective review of 101 patients undergoing UVPP the overall incidence of early post-operative complications was 25%. One patient died because of post-operative airway obstruction. The risk of early post-operative breathing difficulty was related to the patient's weight, previous heart disease, and severity of OSAS measured by the percentage of obstructive apnoeic episodes and minimum oxygen saturation during sleep. As late as one year after surgery 57% of patients had some kind of problem in relation to the operation, the most common complaint being nasopharyngeal regurgitation (24%). Despite these late complications over 90% of the patients reported improvement in daytime somnolence and snoring.

Day care center teachers suffer from voice disorders more often than nurses do. Several risk factors may increase voice disorder prevalence of day care center teachers. The risk factors can be bound to their job content and manner of working i.e. having to raise their voice to attract the attention of the children and to offer them the possibility to perceive spoken information, or to the environment i.e. poor acoustics and excess background noise. The purpose of this study was to measure some of the risk factors for voice disorders of day care center teachers and of a control group (nurses); these were speaking times and speech levels. The background noise levels during activities and RASTI-values (Rapid Speech Transmission Index), i.e. measures of the acoustics of rooms, were also measured at the day care centers. It was found that day care center teachers use their voices more and with higher levels than nurses do. It was also found that the background noise levels are high, which is partly due to the poor acoustics (lack of sufficient attenuation) of the rooms. Control of excess background noise is of utmost importance both for speakers' speech production as well as children's speech recognition.

BAG appears to be a reliable frontal sinus obliteration material, providing favorable conditions for total bony sinus obliteration.

In the ENT Department of University Central Hospital, Turku, the waiting list for elective septoplasty grew to 4 to 5 years in the late 1980s. Therefore, a prospective clinical project was initiated during which all patients waiting for septal surgery were re-examined and nasal airway function was measured with rhinomanometry. Patients with high nasal resistance or other specific indications for nasal obstruction were selected for surgery (n = 432). The remaining patients were excluded from surgery and followed up (n = 284). Results showed that if patients were referred for septal surgery without rhinomanometric study, about 10% became symptom-free within 3 to 5 years. Patients operated on after defining a high preoperative intranasal resistance had a higher postoperative satisfaction level (85%) than those operated on with normal nasal resistances but other indications for correcting the nasal septum (69%). After 3 years, the majority of patients not treated surgically were satisfied with their conservative treatments, although certain patients still required some form of nasal surgery to relieve recurring nasal and/or sinus complaints.

The correlation between rhinomanometry and subjective sensation of nasal obstruction was studied. Patients assessed their nasal airway patency using a visual analogue scale (VAS). The VAS results and rhinomanometry correlated better when unilateral nasal obstruction was evaluated compared to total nasal evaluation. When rhinomanometric data were divided into four clinically relevant grades of obstruction (very patent, normal, obstructed and very obstructed) and the quartiles of the VAS results were compared to these, the agreement was good or fairly good in 75–85% of cases. A similar result was also encountered when, in an experimental study, 30 individuals were asked to breathe through four artificial nose models with a varying inner diameter of 9–3 mm. Again, most subjects assessed these models logically, but in 11 % of the cases the subject assessed the narrowest tube as patent or the widest tube as very obstructed. Our results prove the necessity of having some sort of objective method to evaluate nasal patency; if we rely only on the patient’s sensation, we may get a misleading picture of his nasal function.

Viral sinusitis frequently occurs in the early days of the common cold, but it is a self-limited illness. The sinuses should not be imaged in patients with the common cold if the signs and symptoms of illness gradually become less severe and no specific signs suggestive of bacterial sinusitis occur.

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