Clinical Head and Neck

Question 1

Pure tone audiometry

Answer 1

Determines the quietest sound (threshold of hearing) heard at each frequency in each ear.
Produces an audiogram

Question 2

Tympanometry

Answer 2

Pushes air pressure into the ear canal, making the eardrum move back and forth, measuring its mobility.
Produces a tympanogram

Can assist in detecting: fluid in the middle ear, wax blockage or perforation

Question 3

Pharyngeal pouch (Zenker’s diverticulum)

Answer 3

Herniation of the pharyngeal mucosa forming a pouch where food can lodge causing infection.
Presents as dysphagia etc.
Excised if large

Question 4

Branchial cyst

Answer 4

An embryological remnant due to failure of fusion of branchial arches
Asymptomatic until infected when it presents as a solid painless mass, anterior to the sternocleidomastoid
Treatment: conservative or excision

Question 5

Septal haematoma

Answer 5

A blood-filled cavity (usually bilateral) between the cartilage of the septum and the overlying perichondrium, usually caused by trauma.

As the cartilage relies on the blood supply of the perichondrium, if untreated this can lead to septum necrosis and perforation

Treatment = drainage

Question 6

Premature fusion of cranial sutures

Answer 6

craniosynostosis

The brain doesn’t have space to grow so other structures bulge out

Question 7

Rhinomanometry

Answer 7

Air is massed through the nose to measure the degree of nasal obstruction in each side of the nose