Patients with inverted papilloma should undergo thorough surgery to remove all mucosal disease, most probably by the endoscopic, endonasal route when complete resection is possible. Cases demonstrating atypia or dysplasia may be treated by the endoscopic route. Recurrent disease and metachronous carcinoma can develop after a prolonged period of time. Long-term follow up is recommended to detect recurrence, as disease can become quite extensive before it becomes symptomatic.

In conclusion, our endoscopic repair rate for sinonasal CSF leaks are good and compare well with the standards in the literature. Raised ICP is the most common reason for recurrent CSF leak after repair. Patients with a spontaneous CSF leak and evidence of raised ICP had a 46% failure rate. When consenting such patients for surgery, they must be informed of the lower success rate and that they may need additional procedures, including shunting.

The authors recommend the use of fluid-attenuated inversion recovery and diffusion sequence MRI when definitive radiologic diagnosis of cystic intracranial lesions becomes difficult with routine computerized tomographic scanning and MRI.

Tegmen plate defects causing cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) leaks and brain hernias have conventionally been repaired using soft tissue grafts by a transmastoid approach. A review of the literature reveals that the results of transmastoid repairs have been less than satisfactory. We present here four patients with spontaneous CSF otorrhoea who had tegmen defects repaired using the middle cranial fossa approach. An autologous bone pate slab mixed with fibrin glue with additional temporalis fascia reinforcement was used for the repairs. All four patients had uneventful postoperative periods and have had no subsequent CSF leak (follow-up range: 1-3 years). We believe that the middle cranial fossa approach is more effective than the transmastoid approach for the repair of CSF leaks and brain hernias through tegmen plate defects. An important additional benefit is hearing preservation. We also recommend the use of bone pate along with soft tissue for the repair in order to achieve a secure seal. Bone pate can effectively seal multiple defects in the tegmen plate without any risk of migration.

Many cochlear implant candidates express hopes of enjoying music following implantation. Our aim was to assess the appreciation of music after cochlear implantation in adult patients. Thirty-five out of 45 cochlear implantees (78%) from the North East Programme responded to a questionnaire. Only 16 out of 35 patients (46%) listened to music after implantation. Enjoyment of music on a self-assessment scale was graded a mean of 8.7/10 before deafness but only 2.6/10 after implantation. Listening to music after implantation was more likely in younger patients, those with higher speech perception scores and those with a shorter length of deafness, but was not found to be related to gender, type of implant, processing strategy, time since implant or music enjoyment before becoming deaf. Appreciation of music after cochlear implantation is disappointingly low. Future developments in implant technology should strive to improve satisfaction with music listening.