61 research outputs found
Gerry Lowry
No full textGerry Lowry oral history interview as conducted by Dorothe Norton.
Gerry Lowry worked for the Soil Conservation Service as a biologist before coming to the Fish and Wildlife Service as an environmental specialist and eventually Assistant Regional Director for the Mid-West regional office in Minneapolis.
Organization: FWS
Name: Gerry Lowery
Years: 1978-1990
Program: Refuges
Keywords: History, Biography, Employees (USFWS), Management, MilitarySubject/USFW Retiree: Lowry, Gerry
April 14, 2005
Interviewed by: Dorothe Norton
D. Norton:
Well Jerry, thanks for the good directions you gave because I almost did it without anymore but the one phone call. So now we'll just get busy and do the interview. First of all, I want to know where and when you were born.
Gerry Lowry:
In Eau Claire, Wisconsin at Luther Hospital on August 15, 1935.
D. Norton:
Okay, you're a young guy. What were your parent's names?
Gerry Lowry:
Oliver Walker Lowery, mom Ginny Lucille.
D. Norton:
What were their educations and their jobs?
Gerry Lowry:
My father was a high school graduate, one of the few in his family, and my mother attended a teacher's normal college in Eau Claire.
D. Norton:
Did she teach school then?
Gerry Lowry:
Never.
D. Norton:
Never. Okay, and so where did you spend your early years then, all in....
Gerry Lowry:
Let me tell you another thing, my father worked as a manager for the U.S. Rubber Company at Eau Claire. He managed a team of women who made bicycle tires.
D. Norton:
Oh, wow!
Gerry Lowry:
He contracted probably a variation of the British flu or some severe respiratory illness when he was 29 years old, and within a couple of years he had severe cardiopulmonay side effects that made him an invalid the rest of his life.
D. Norton:
Oh, that's sad.
Gerry Lowry:
He lived until he was 42 years old. After that occurred, we moved onto a 20-acre farm between Eau Claire and Colfax, Wisconsin, and that's where I spent the first nine years of my life, in a very rural environment. My dad was in and out of hospitals, bed-ridden most of the time at home, not very mobile. My mom then would work off and on at jobs in Eau Claire, and towards the end she worked at the ammunitions plant in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. My dad died in 1944, and we moved to Eau Claire Wisconsin, I was in about the fourth grade, I think, at the time. I went to school there for about a year, and then she remarried and we moved to Altoona, Wisconsin, and I was there until a freshman in high school. The person she married had been a cook in the Army during World War II, and he always wanted a restaurant; he wanted to be a chef, so he bought a restaurant in New Auburn, Wisconsin, which is where Sandy is from. So that's how we got to New Auburn, and so I spent three years then in high school in New Auburn, and graduated in 1953.
D. Norton:
That's called New Auburn High School?
Gerry Lowry:
Yes, New Auburn High School. After that I went to college for a few months, and then dropped out of college and joined the Air Force in 1954, and did it in order to get the GI Bill, quite frankly, because it was clear to me that going to school and being hungry were not compatible!
D. Norton:
Okay. So while you were in the Air Force, where were you based?
Gerry Lowry:
Well first, of course, like everyone else, I went to Lackland Air Force Base in Texas, and then from there Chanute Field and to Meteorology school in Illinois. I was there for several months and then went from there to Colorado Springs to the Air Force Base as a weather observer and spent a few months there. I then went from there to Anchorage, Alaska for what was then considered to be a mandatory overseas assignment. I spent a few weeks there and then was assigned to King Salmon, Alaska, which was a remote weather station at the base of the Alaska Peninsula. I was there a few months and then came back to Anchorage for a few weeks, got reassigned to Shemya, Alaska, which is at the very end of the Aleutian chain, or almost to the end, within about 30-40 miles of Attu, which is the last island in the chain. I and one other weatherman set up a weather station on Shemya, which turned out later to be a base where they had C-119s that were catching photographic capsules that were being ejected from the first satellites that were sent around the world to take pictures, and the C-119s would fly out with about 1000-foot long metal or wire hooks to catch these parachutes as they got dropped in out of the satellites. So that went on for a few months, and then Northwest Airlines made some deal with the government where they took over the island and used it as an emergency stop from between Anchorage and Japan, and most or all of the military personnel then left the island. I have no idea, but I think at about that time other technology came along to solve the problem on retrieving photographic material from the satellites. We were on Shemya for about six months; after that I went back to Anchorage and spent a week or two and then went up to Fairbanks to Eielson Air Force Base for another short period of time, and then was assigned to Galena, Alaska for the remainder of my tour duty in Alaska. Galena was another weather observation station along the Yukon River, between Nome and Fairbanks. I stayed there for the remainder of that; I was probably there for a number of months, I don't remember exactly how many, and then went from there and was reassigned back in the U.S. to Great Falls to Malmstrom Air Force Base, and was there for a number of months. I then was selected to go to the National Air Force Weather Center at Suitland, Maryland, and was assigned there; it was near Andrews Air Force Base, but Suitland was the weather center away from the base. Periodically, we would go down onto the Washington Mall when the Soviet Union had nuclear tests. We would go down and plot the weather and the drift of nuclear fallout material around the globe until that event ended. Also, while I was there I went to an exercise for a week where we went to a mountain, an underground mountain, to test what would happen in the event of an attack on the U.S., which was kind of interesting because we went inside a mountain and had all of our weather apparatus there and were involved in that exercise. I was discharged from the Air Force in November of 1957 at Andrews Air Force Base, and I was discharged a couple of months early in order to start college in January of 1958.
I started at what was called Wisconsin State College at that time, now it's considered The University at Eau Claire, Wisconsin. I attended school there for a year and a half in just kind of a pre-Science curriculum, and at the end of that time, which would have been the summer of 1959, I applied and was accepted in geology at Montana University at Missoula. I went there for one semester and decided that I would prefer to be in conservation, so I transferred to the University of Minnesota at St. Paul. I was perhaps influenced because my girlfriend, now my wife Sandra, was from New Auburn, Wisconsin, and so I came back to the University of Minnesota and started there in January of 1960, and graduated from there in March of 1962. At the time I graduated, I applied for jobs, and I saw one application for a fellowship that paid as much as a job with the Fish and Wildlife Service. About the same time, I got a letter from Gulf Breeze, Florida, and the Fish and Wildlife Marine Research arm at that time offering me, I think it was, a GS-5 job probably, to start as a biologist there. I'm not of the grade level. I also, at about the same time, got a letter from Oregon State saying that I was ordered a fellowship in Fisheries that would pay the same as the job at Fish and Wildlife Service, plus the fact that I could get a Masters degree in Fisheries, and so I naturally accepted the fellowship at Oregon, and started there in the summer of 1962.
Sandra and I were located on a 50,000-acre Georgia-Pacific plantation near Toledo, Oregon, studying cutthroat trout migration and reproduction in food, and did a two year study on cutthroat trout and the impacts, a pre-logging baseline study that was eventually to study the impact of three different kinds of logging. So, basically, what we did was we had three small streams, and we took population estimates and did food studies on cutthroat trout over a two year period, and then some years after I left, Georgia-Pacific came in and did clear cut and two other different kinds of logging, and the effects of that were studied over a period of many, many years under Major Professor, Don Chapman, and later Jim Hall, and the results were eventually published that were used in the west coast as guidance for environmental regulations to minimize the impact of logging. When I finished there, and I got a Masters degree in Fisheries Research in March of 1964, I was selected for a fisheries research job in Wisconsin Conservation Department, now their Department of Natural Resources at Seven Springs Hatchery near Madison, Wisconsin.
We went there and I worked on warm water fish research at Cox Hollow Impoundment west of Madison, and did that for several months; well actually, we lived in a couple of different places there, so it probably would be more like a year or so. Then I got more interested in trout research, so it shifted from warm water research to trout research, and transferred to Westfield, to Lawrence Creek Research Station, and which was a long-term study of brook trout production and life history and the impacts of different kinds of stream improvement techniques. While I was there, I got acquainted with the people at Stevens Point at the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point, and they offered me a job teaching biology. At the same time, I also applied for a job with the U.S. Soil Conservation Service for a field biologist in northern Wisconsin. I did teach for a part of a semester at Stevens Point, but got an opportunity to take the field biologist job for the U.S. Soil Conservation Service. So, beginning in about the very late fall of 1965, I started working for the Federal Government as a field biologist for northern Wisconsin.
My territory was basically north of a line from Eau Claire to Green Bay, Wisconsin, and traveled with a canoe on top of a government car, and did a lot work with landowners, fish ponds, developing plans for the enhancement of deer, grouse, and other wildlife on private lands in that area. One of the most interesting things that I did during that period of time was, because while in the Soil Conservation Service, there were only two biologists in the state of Wisconsin, and some of the activities of a biologist went over into the area of recreation specialist, and I gradually became a recreation specialist and designing campgrounds. I designed a campground at Washburn, Wisconsin on Lake Superior for example, and some others ones, and did analysis of recreational potential and also some economic analysis of whether things were feasible or not. But probably the most fun thing that I did during that period of time was to get involved in writing canoe trail guides for Wisconsin. I wrote the canoe trail guides for northwest Wisconsin and north central Wisconsin, and also northeastern Wisconsin. The northwest and north central ones were published by independent canoe trail organizations. These were all done under the Food and Agricultural Act of 1964, which authorized something called Research Conservation and Development Projects; under the auspices of those programs, the work was done by the Soil Conservation Service, taking air photos and making maps of the rivers, and then I would write the narratives. In the course of doing that, it became necessary, of course, to travel many of the rivers with a canoe so that I had some first- hand knowledge. But the one for northeastern Wisconsin, the canoe trail organization that was there decided to cut a deal with Howard Mead of Wisconsin Tales and Trails, and so that one was published as a for profit venture by Wisconsin Tales and Trails. I found it amusing in an example of human nature that when Howard Mead got ahold of a narrative, he went through it and edited lightly and then put himself down as the author, which, as a philosopher says, "You know, these are humans, we shouldn't expect too much." This applies to a lot of things.
But anyway, after that I became more interested in management and, of course, we were having children at the time and, as often is the case, people who work for organizations, both private and public, once they get to be thirty and realize that there is something called money and consequences that flow from it and have children, we decided that it might be a good idea to have a higher paying job, so I got involved in management of the Resource Conservation and Development Project as project coordinator and did that for a couple of years, and a couple of years later was selected by the Soil Conservation Service for their Executive Development Program at one of six universities, and I was sent to Syracuse University for a year to get a Masters degree in Public Administration. It was a delightful year, both I and Sandy went to school at that time, we had four kids, we lived in student housing, we saw no one from our agency for a year, they paid our full salary and all of the costs of going to school as well as relocation allowances. It was just a wonderful time, and we enjoyed Syracuse. However, it was sort of like The Devil and Daniel Webster; at the end of that time they informed me we were going to go to Washington. We weren't real happy about it because we had been living in Spooner, Wisconsin. I always like to think it was like looking through the telescope from one end and then somebody grabbing it and turning it around and saying, "Here, look through the other end for awhile," because it was a completely different situation, and we weren't really thrilled about it, but naturally we went there because in order to go to school, I had to sign an agreement that I would work anywhere that they wanted me to for at least two years.
So, we went down there, and as it turned out, it was really a most interesting and enjoyable assignment except for the commuting. Like a lot of families with children, we lived out in Fairfax, Virginia in a place called Greenbrier, but it was about an hour and fifteen minutes commute to work, and it was always very heavy traffic and the last ten miles was pretty much bumper to bumper, so the commuting was no fun. But, I really did find that the best and brightest people in the agency with at that time, the Soil Conservation Service, now called the Natural Resource Conservation Service, had a lot of very bright and interesting people in Washington. When I got there it was in 1975. I was there for a little over two years, and it was at the height of the environmental movement, so it was a fun time for an environmentalist and conservationist to be there because you had the opportunity to write regulations and speeches for people that could actually influence the environmental activities of the agency and, to some extent, the public and politicians nationwide. So, it was a fun period of time. At the end of the two years I decided that I really kind of wanted to get out of Washington, so I applied for a job as the Midwest Regional Biologist at Lincoln, Nebraska for the Soil Conservation Service. I was selected for it, and in late 1977 we moved to Lincoln, Nebraska and I assumed my duties at the regional office as Midwest Regional Biologist.
I found that the job for the regional offices, quite frankly, in Soil Conservation Service by that time was becoming a little bit redundant. I felt like it was a fun job, a great place to live and, in fact, the people in Nebraska were the most friendly people we have ever encountered, but I found the job just kind of boring. Also, at that time we had moved over twenty times and, of course, with school and jobs and everything. So Sandy and I decided we would really like to get somewhere and stay, and I would have had to have had probably three more transfers in the Soil Conservation Service before I could have got a conservations job and stay in one place, and it wouldn't necessarily have been where I wanted to be, and I wanted to be in Minneapolis, and I wanted the kids not to have to move, the oldest one was going to be a junior in high school. So we started applying for jobs with Fish and Wildlife Service in Minneapolis. I finally got selected for one, I had to take a two grade cut to get there, but I was sick of transferring and I wanted the kids to be in one spot.
That is how we came to the Fish and Wildlife Service in Minneapolis, as an environmental specialist for the Refuge System at the regional office in Minneapolis. That was in 1978, and within a couple of years, I enjoyed that job, but within a couple of years, Ray St. Ores, who was the Assistant Regional Director for Environment, that wasn't the name at that time, retired. I applied for his job; I was encouraged to apply for it by other people at the regional office, and was selected for it, and that was the job that I spent for the next ten years, even though its name got changed and the function got changed to some degree, and so I was the Assistant Regional Director for, what ended up when I retired, the ARD for Environment, Regional Office, Minneapolis. I retired in 1990, at the age of 55. That basically was the moment I became eligible!
My general philosophy about jobs is that it's nice if you could be at a job for three years. The first year, if it's a challenging job, you're kind of bewildered, the second year you get it down pat, and the third year you make some contributions. After that, it tends to become kind of pro forma and not too exciting. I considered the ten years that I spent at that job as a fun job with a lot of interesting people, but not very exciting. So when it became possible for me to retire at 55, I accepted the opportunity and left the Fish and Wildlife Service.
In the meantime, we were living in Hudson, Wisconsin, which is just across the river, and in the meantime, well beginning actually in Nebraska, my wife Sandy had gotten a real estate license in Nebraska, but before she had a chance to do much with it, we moved to Wisconsin and I began working at Fish and Wildlife Service. She then started working as a real estate broker, first a small company and then Century 21, and then after about six years or so of that, she decided that she wanted to work by herself, and formed Lowery Real Estate in Hudson, Wisconsin starting in 1988. When I retired from Fish and Wildlife Service in 1990, I had previously gotten a brokers license so that she and I could talk about the business she was in too, she wasn't ready to retire, and so I worked with her and basically helped her in the management and the business execution side of the real estate business until about 1997. At which time we sold our property, and at that time I had been seven years into retirement, and we sold our property in Hudson and moved to a lake cabin on Loon Lake, about forty miles north of Eau Claire, Wisconsin. We had built the cabin by hand, starting in about 1985; it was sort of a weekend hobby where we would kind of de-stress ourselves from our jobs. We would come down and put up a row of logs, and slowly, over a period of a couple of years, we built the cabin, and it has now become our home. So, I guess at this point I'll ask, "Dorothe, what else are you interested in?
D. Norton:
Well, you didn't need any training when you came to us because you already had all of this other experience, but did you ever work with any animals or anything?
Gerry Lowry:
When you say animals, you mean...?
D. Norton:
Any of them, wildcats....?
Gerry Lowry:
No, basically my degree at the University of Minnesota was in fisheries, well it was Fish and Wildlife Management is the degree that you get from University of Minnesota. It's necessarily kind of general, but it had an emphasis in fisheries and the Masters degree at Oregon was Fisheries Research. When I worked as a field biologist for the Soil Conservation Service, we worked with fish and wildlife for private landowners in northern Wisconsin, but when you do that you're developing management plans, it's not hands on work with live animals or research with them. The only actual work with animals I did was the research work at Oregon State University with fish, and then later with fish research and trout research, and warm water fish with the State of Wisconsin, where you're actually netting fish, tagging them, weighing them, releasing them, recapturing them, and estimating them. The emphasis in my career was in fisheries in terms of working with animals hands on.
D. Norton:
Were there any major issues that you were involved with that you had to deal with, or were they all major issues?
Gerry Lowry:
Well, that's an interesting question. I guess I don't think of it that way. You know, you go to work, you do your job, and whatever comes, you do the best you can, whether it's major or minor.
D. Norton:
Okay.
Gerry Lowry:
I would say nothing really stands out.
D. Norton:
So you spent all of your career then at the Minneapolis Regional Office?
Gerry Lowry:
In the Fish and Wildlife Service, yes.
D. Norton:
Who were your supervisors?
Gerry Lowry:
My first supervisor was... who was the gentleman that lost his son in the canoe? I forget his name, he was a real nice fellow. You probably know him.
D. Norton:
He lost his son?
Gerry Lowry:
His son died on the Cattle River I think, in a canoe accident.
D. Norton:
I can't remember, I vaguely remember.
Gerry Lowry:
He would h
Ausbildungskonzepte der Audiologie in der Schweiz
No full textDie Kommission für Audiologie und Expertenwesen der Schweizerischen Gesellschaft für Otorhinolaryngologie hat sich in letzter Zeit intensiv mit der Frage der Qualität der Ausbildung in Audiologie sowohl für HNO-Ärzte als auch medizinische Praxisassistentinnen beschäftigt. Insbesondere für Audiometristinnen, welche in den Arztpraxen die Hörtests durchführen, existierten bisher keine Grundlagen für die Ausbildung. Die Kommission hat deshalb ein verbindliches Ausbildungskonzept für die Schweiz erarbeitet. Die Ausbildung für medizinische Praxisassistentinnen ist in drei Modulen aufgebaut. Im ersten Teil ist das Ziel des Kurs die Erstellung eines Tonaudiogramms mit korrekter Maskierung. Das zweite Modul widmet sich der Sprachaudiometrie und den Messungen für die Hörgeräteexpertise. Neben Referaten zu den theoretischen Grundlagen wird in beiden Modulen ein grosses Gewicht auf praktisches Üben an Patienten und mit Unterstützung von Computer-Simulations-Programmen gelegt. Das dritte Modul umfasst das selbstständige Erstellen von Audiogrammen in der Praxis unter Supervision des HNO-Arztes. Voraussetzung für das flächendeckende Kursangebot in allen Landesteilen war, dass die Kommission für alle Kurse gemeinsame und verbindliche Richtlinien zur Durchführung der Audiometrie erstellt hat. Dazu war insbesondere eine Einigung auf eine einheitliche Methode zum Maskieren eines Tonaudiogramms nötig. Die gewählte Audiometrie-Methode muss nun auch allen HNO-Ärzten in der Praxis vermittelt werden und wird zukünftig auch in der Audiologie-Ausbildung an den Kliniken gelehrt. Die gemeinsam erarbeiteten Richtlinien werden in der Weiterbildungsverordnung für HNO-Ärzte verankert. In Zukunft wird für die Abrechnung der audiologischen Leistungen zu Handen der Sozialversicherungen Voraussetzung sein, dass die Untersuchung von Praxisassistentinnen mit entsprechendem Zertifikat in Audiologie ausgeführt wird
Der „Professional Ear User“ – Implikationen für die Prävention, Diagnostik und Therapie von Ohrerkrankungen
No full textBACKGROUND
Perfect hearing is crucial to the practice of various professions, such as instrument makers, musicians, sound engineers, and other professions not related to music, such as sonar technicians. For people of these occupational groups, we propose the term "professional ear user" (PEU) in analogy to "professional voice user". PEUs have special requirements for their hearing health, as they have well-known above-average auditory perceptual abilities on which they are professionally dependent.
OBJECTIVE
The purpose of this narrative review is to summarize selected aspects of the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of ear disorders in PEUs.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION
Prevention of hearing disorders and other ear diseases includes protection from excessive sound levels, avoidance of ototoxins and nicotine, and a safe manner of cleaning the outer auditory canal. Diagnosing hearing disorders in PEUs can be challenging, since subclinical but relevant changes in hearing cannot be reliably objectified by conventional audiometric methods. Moreover, the fact that a PEU is affected by an ear disease may influence treatment decisions. Further, physicians must be vigilant for non-organic ear diseases in PEUs. Lastly, measures to promote comprehensive ear health in PEUs as part of an educational program and to maintain ear health by means of a specialized otolaryngology service are discussed. In contrast to existing concepts, we lay the attention on the entirety of occupational groups that are specifically dependent on their ear health in a professional setting. In this context, we suggest avoiding a sole focus on hearing disorders and their prevention, but rather encourage the maintenance of a comprehensive ear health.Hintergrund
Ein vollständig intaktes Hörvermögen ist zentral für die Ausübung verschiedener Berufe wie Instrumentenbaumeister, Musiker, Tonmeister sowie für weitere Berufsgruppen ohne Bezug zu Musik wie beispielsweise Sonar-Techniker. Für Personen all dieser Berufsgruppen schlagen wir in Analogie zum „Professional Voice User“ den Begriff „Professional Ear User“ (PEU) vor. PEU haben spezielle Anforderungen an ihre Ohrgesundheit, da sie über eine überdurchschnittliche auditive Wahrnehmungsfähigkeit verfügen, von der sie beruflich abhängig sind.
Fragestellung
Die vorliegende narrative Übersichtsarbeit hat zum Ziel, die sich daraus ergebenden speziellen Aspekte der Prävention, Diagnostik und Therapie von Ohrerkrankungen bei PEU zusammenzufassen.
Ergebnisse und Schlussfolgerung
Die Prävention von Hörstörungen und weiteren Ohrerkrankungen umfasst den Schutz vor zu hohen Schallpegeln, die Vermeidung von Ototoxinen oder Nikotin sowie die korrekte Durchführung einer Gehörgangsreinigung. Die Abklärung von Hörstörungen kann sich bei PEU herausfordernd gestalten, da subklinische, jedoch einschränkende Veränderungen des Hörvermögens mit konventionellen audiometrischen Methoden nicht zuverlässig objektiviert werden können. Schließlich kann das Vorliegen einer Ohrerkrankung bei einem PEU Therapieentscheidungen beeinflussen. Weiter muss bei PEU auch eine hohe Wachsamkeit bezüglich nichtorganischer Ohrerkrankungen bestehen. Abschließend werden Möglichkeiten diskutiert, um bei PEU eine umfassende Ohrgesundheit im Rahmen eines edukativen Programms zu fördern und mittels einer spezialisierten ohrenärztlichen Sprechstunde zu erhalten. Im Gegensatz zu bestehenden Konzepten ist der Fokus dabei auf die Gesamtheit der Berufsgruppen gerichtet, welche in professionellem Rahmen speziell von der Ohrgesundheit abhängig sind. Außerdem soll der Schwerpunkt hierbei nicht nur auf Hörstörungen und deren Prävention, sondern auch auf der Erhaltung einer ganzheitlichen Ohrgesundheit liegen
Assessment of Surgical Complications With Respect to the Surgical Indication: Proposal for a Novel Index.
No full textIntroduction: The Clavien-Dindo classification is a broadly accepted surgical complications classification system, grading complications by the extent of therapy necessary to resolve them. A drawback of the method is that it does not consider why the patient was operated on primarily. Methods: We designed a novel index based on Clavien-Dindo but with respect to the surgical indication. We surveyed an international panel of otolaryngologists who filled out a questionnaire with 32 real case-inspired scenarios. Each case was graded for the surgical complication, surgical indication, and a subjective rating whether the complication was acceptable or not. Results: Seventy-seven otolaryngologists responded to the survey. Mean subjective rating and surgical complication grading for each scenario showed an inverse correlation (r2 = 0.147, p = 0.044). When grading the surgical complication with respect to the surgical indication, the correlation with the subjective rating increased dramatically (r2 = 0.307, p = 0.0022). Conclusion: We describe a novel index grading surgical complications with respect to the surgical indication. In our survey, most respondents judged a complication as acceptable or not according to its grade but kept in mind the surgical indication. This subjective judgment could be quantified with our novel index
Evaluation of universal newborn hearing screening in Switzerland 2012 and follow-up data for Zurich
No full textBACKGROUND: The European Consensus Statement of Neonatal Hearing recommended universal newborn hearing screening (UNHS) in 1998. UNHS was introduced in Switzerland in 1999 under the auspices of a "Swiss Working Group Hearing Screening in Newborns". The aim of this study was to evaluate the number of newborns being screened and consequently followed-up in Switzerland for the year 2012.
METHODS: Postal questionnaires were sent to all registered maternity clinics and birth-centres in Switzerland. To evaluate follow-up of newborns failing the screening process, a retrospective consecutive cohort analysis of newborns failing screening at the University Hospital Zurich between 2005 and 2010 was performed.
RESULTS: A total of 102/110 (92.7%) maternity clinics and 1/14 (7.1%) birth-centres routinely performed UNHS. When weighted according to the number of births in the varying locations, 97.9% of all newborn received hearing screening. At the University Hospital of Zurich, 253/12,080 (2.1%) newborns failed the screening test and in 15/253 (6%) a relevant bilateral hearing impairment was found. This makes an overall incidence of congenitally relevant hearing loss of 0.12%. Unfortunately, 33/253 (13%) of newborns with failed screening were lost to follow-up.
CONCLUSION: UNHS is well-established in Switzerland and the vast majority of newborns are screened. However, follow-up of failed screens is disappointing. Further measures need to be taken to improve follow up
Chudley-McCullough syndrome: case report and review of the neuroimaging spectrum
No full textWe report on a child with Chudley-McCullough syndrome and re-evaluate the spectrum of imaging findings (in 15 previously reported patients) which appear to be variable and, to some extent, ambiguous in the literature. Magnetic resonance imaging of the brain revealed asymmetric colpocephaly with agenesis of the splenium corporis callosi, ribbon-like subcortical gray matter heterotopia along the cingulate gyri, malrotation of both hippocampi, and dysplasia of the cerebellum. Macrocrania together with sensorineural hearing loss, colpocephaly, and posterior or complete agenesis of the corpus callosum can be considered the hallmarks of the autosomal recessive Chudley-McCullough syndrome. These may be variably associated with interhemispheric arachnoid cyst, cortical dysplasia, gray matter heterotopia, and cerebellar dysplasia. While early support with hearing aids may lead to improved language and cognitive outcome, shunting of ventricular dilatation is not indicated in the Chudley-McCullough syndrome
Hearing Loss in Cancer Patients with Skull Base Tumors Undergoing Pencil Beam Scanning Proton Therapy: A Retrospective Cohort Study
No full textSIMPLE SUMMARY: Most patients with skull base tumors require radiation therapy as part of their overall treatment, preferably with protons. However, vital and healthy organs, such as the cochlea, are often located in the immediate anatomical vicinity of the tumor. Despite the high precision of the proton beam, irradiating the cochlea is often unavoidable, resulting in an increased risk of hearing loss. To assess the frequency and severity of changes in hearing after proton therapy, we performed a retrospective study in a cohort of 51 patients undergoing proton therapy for skull base tumors. We observed that a hearing threshold shift correlates to the applied radiation dose intensity to the cochlea. In addition, advancing age, hearing sensitivity before proton therapy, and the time elapsed after the end of proton therapy are independently associated with the deterioration of the hearing threshold after proton therapy. These results are essential to adequately inform patients about the treatment’s impact and side effects. ABSTRACT: To assess the incidence and severity of changes in hearing threshold in patients undergoing high-dose pencil-beam-scanning proton therapy (PBS-PT). This retrospective cohort study included fifty-one patients (median 50 years (range, 13–68)) treated with PBS-PT for skull base tumors. No chemotherapy was delivered. Pure tone averages (PTAs)were determined before (baseline) and after PBS-PT as the average hearing thresholds at frequencies of 0.5, 1, 2, and 4 kHz. Hearing changes were calculated as PTA differences between pre-and post-PBS-PT. A linear mixed-effects model was used to assess the relationship between the PTA at the follow-up and the baseline, the cochlea radiation dose intensity, the increased age, and the years after PBS-PT. Included patients were treated for chordoma (n = 24), chondrosarcoma (n = 9), head and neck tumors (n = 9), or meningioma (n = 3), with a mean tumor dose of 71.1 Gy (RBE) (range, 52.0–77.8), and a mean dose of 37 Gy (RBE) (range, 0.0–72.7) was delivered to the cochleas. The median time to the first follow-up was 11 months (IQR, 5.5–33.7). The PTA increased from a median of 15 dB (IQR 10.0–25) at the baseline to 23.8 (IQR 11.3–46.3) at the first follow-up. In the linear mixed-effect model, the baseline PTA (estimate 0.80, 95%CI 0.64 to 0.96, p ≤ 0.001), patient’s age (0.30, 0.03 to 0.57, p = 0.029), follow-up time (2.07, 0.92 to 3.23, p ≤ 0.001), and mean cochlear dose in Gy (RBE) (0.34, 0.21 to 0.46, p ≤ 0.001) were all significantly associated with an increase in PTA at follow-up. The applied cochlear dose and baseline PTA, age, and time after treatment were significantly associated with hearing loss after proton therapy
Cochlea-Implantation
No full textDie Cochlea-Implantation ist eine erstaunliche medizinische Erfolgsgeschichte. Sie erlaubt hochgradig schwerhörigen oder tauben Patientinnen und Patienten, ein Hörvermögen zu erlangen und an der Welt der Hörenden teilzuhaben. Dieser Artikel soll einen kurzen Überblick über den bisherigen Weg und den jetzigen Stand geben
The Shiji chapter "Guji liezhuan" (Traditions of Witty Remonstrants): A Source to Look for Rhetorical Strategiesinn Early China
No full textThe “Guji liezhuan” 滑稽列傳, found at the chapter 126 of Sima Qian 司馬遷’s (c. 145–c. 90 BC) Shiji 史記, in modern times has been considered the starting point to discuss the topic of “humour” in ancient China (Chen Wenxin), and the word guji 滑稽sometimes has been translated as “humorist” (Knechtges), someone who entertains by making people laugh. At the same time, this chapter has also been considered an historical source to analyse the figure of the court jester (Feng Yuanjun, Wang Guowei); however, the Great Historian constructed the anecdotes in a way in which the focal point of the stories had to be identified in the speeches of the characters presented. Those speeches, performed by low class individuals (mostly jesters), were linked by the author to the Six Disciplines (Liuyi 六藝) as they were conceived as important for the government of the state, and they can be classified as examples of indirect remonstrance (fengjian 諷諫) (Schaberg). The crucial point and what makes this chapter peculiar is that the remonstrances pronounced by the characters are expressed in a “humorous” way, which means they make the addressee of the rhetorical discourse laugh. This quality is identified by the word guji, then an adjective, in the title of the chapter. My paper aims to stress how Sima Qian made the term guji meaningful (a feature already pointed out by Timoteus Pokora) constructing anecdotes in which the protagonists express their issues in an entertaining way of speech and behaviour; so as to say, “humorous” here is a rhetorical quality of their speeches. My aim is also to point out that term guji so understood is peculiar only to the part supposedly written by Sima Qian. In fact, Chu Shaosun褚少孫 (c. 105–c. 30 BC), the only contributor to the Shiji who reveals himself, adding some anecdotes at the end of the chapter, understood guji more as an “humorous”-entertaining features of the characters and stories
Correlation Between Electrocochleographic Changes During Surgery and Hearing Outcome in Cochlear Implant Recipients
No full textObjective:
To determine the correlation between intraoperative changes of electrocochleography (ECochG) responses and traumatic cochlear implant insertions as well as postoperative hearing loss.
Methods:
ECochG, radiological, and audiological data were collected prospectively in a cochlear implant recipient with otosclerosis and assumed cochlear trauma during electrode insertion. A systematic review was conducted within PubMed-NCBI, EMBASE, and the Cochrane Library using the terms “Cochlear implant” and “Electrocochleography.” Original studies that evaluated intraoperative ECochG responses and postoperative hearing loss were selected and analyzed.
Results:
The case report revealed a drop of intra- and extracochlear ECochG signals during electrode insertion. The postoperative computed tomography scan suggested a scalar dislocation. There was no measurable hearing 4 weeks after surgery. Within the database search, nine articles met the inclusion criteria. All were case series reports (range from 2 to 36 subjects) with a total of 173 subjects. Due to the heterogeneous data, a meta-analysis was unfeasible.
Conclusions:
In concordance with some findings in the literature, the presented case report suggests that a drop of intra- and extracochlear ECochG signals during the insertion of the electrode array is associated with cochlear trauma and postoperative hearing loss in some cases. However, the literature is inconclusive regarding the correlation between intraoperative changes of the ECochG signals and postoperative hearing preservation. More studies investigating the correlation are needed to provide sufficient data
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