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A critical literature appraisal and meta-analysis shows that IT gentamicin injection can control vertigo in patients with MD who have limited hearing injury. The quality of research in this field has improved remarkably over the years. However, a large-scale randomized controlled trial is warranted to confirm the predictive factors for the effectiveness of IT gentamicin injection in treating MD.

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We have identified multiple factors that are associated with increased recurrence of SCC involving the temporal bone.

We propose a novel hybrid otitis media (OM) computer aided detection (CAD) system, designed to aid in the self-diagnosis of various forms of OM. OM is a prevalent disease in both children and adults. Our system is able to differentiate normal ear from acute otitis media (AOM), otitis media with effusion (OME) and the multi-categories of chronic otitis media including perforation, retraction, cholesteatoma, etc. We propose a modified double active contour segmentation method designed for use with otoscope images, and enabled to handle user acquired data. To describe the visual symptoms (e.g., red, bulging, effusion, perforation, retraction, etc.) of otitis media accurately, we extract color, geometric and texture features by grid color moment, Gabor filter, local binary pattern and histogram of oriented gradients. A powerful classification structure based on Adaboost is used to select the most useful features and build a strong classifier. Our system achieves classification accuracy as high as 88.06% and is suitable for real use. In addition, some interesting observations about OM otoscope images are also discussed.

Although rare, small VS may cause severe facial neuropathy, mimicking the presentation of facial nerve schwannomas and other less common pathologies. In the absence of labyrinthine extension on MRI, surgical exploration is the only reliable means of establishing a diagnosis. In the case of confirmed VS, early gross total resection with facial nerve preservation and labyrinthine segment decompression may afford full motor recovery-an outcome that cannot be achieved with facial nerve grafting.

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Poster Presentations P159Methods: Retrospective review of non-randomized prospectively maintained patient databases at two tertiary centers from 1998-2008; Sahlgrenska University Hospital (SU) in Gothenburg, Sweden, and Aberdeen Royal Infirmary (ARI) in Aberdeen, Scotland. Patients with stage III and IV disease were included in the study. Primary outcome measures included 3-year overall and disease-specific survival depending on treatment.Results: A total of 176 patients were identified, of whom 83% were male and 17% were female with an average age of 65. Sixty-five patients (37%) presented with stage III tumors, of which 51 patients received organ-preserving treatment and 14 patients underwent total laryngectomy. Corresponding figures for the 111 patients (63%) presenting with stage IV disease were 42 and 69. Three-year overall and disease-specific survival for stage III were 58% and 73% respectively. Corresponding figures for stage IV disease were 42% and 53%. Choice of treatment did not significantly influence survival for stage III (P = 0.56) or IV (P = 0.93) disease.Conclusions: Choice of treatment, whether it be organ preservation or surgery, does not significantly influence overall or disease-specific survival. Therefore, other factors such as quality of life and voice and efficacy of salvage treatments are perhaps more likely to indicate preferred treatment options.