{"id":58780,"date":"2009-11-28T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-11-28T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"tag:www.infinitehealthresources.com:\/\/e042d42871979bd00e2e649be38c0ab5"},"modified":"2009-11-28T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-11-28T05:00:00","slug":"otolaryngology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/58780","title":{"rendered":"Otolaryngology"},"content":{"rendered":"

Otolaryngology<\/font><\/strong><\/p>\n

Making the Connection<\/strong><\/p>\n

Why do otolaryngologists specialize in these three particular areas? Most specialists<\/p>\n

limit themselves to one body part or system. Ophthalmologists focus only on eyes.<\/p>\n

Cardiologists make their living off of hearts. ENT doctors get three body areas on which<\/p>\n

to focus their expertise.<\/p>\n

The reason is actually quite simple. The three are all connected. The ear is connected to the nose and throat via the auditory (or Eustachian) tube while the nasal and sinus passages drain directly into the throat via the pharynx. That’s why you get a sore throat when your nose drips and why a cold often turns into an ear or sinus infection. It’s also why people with allergies are much more likely to suffer from chronic ear infections and sinusitis than people without. Given that, it should come as no surprise that ENT docs are some of the busiest specialists around. Just consider the numbers:
&bull Hearing loss affects one in 10 people. We’re not just talking about older people, either. The increasing noisiness
of modern life, including earblowing concerts and too-loud MP3 players means that even people in their 30s and 40s are saying, &ldquo What?&rdquo a bit more often than they’d like. In fact, an estimated one in eight children and teens already show signs of hearing loss. Noise isn’t the only risk factor for hearing loss, either. Quit smoking and you could reduce your risk of hearing loss nearly 200 percent. Even eating a healthy diet filled with antioxidantrich fruits and vegetables could reduce your risk.
&bull Over 35 million people a year have allergies. These numbers are increasing due to environmental changes that affect our immune system. Some say we’ve simply become &ldquo too clean,&rdquo so our immune system overreacts to every foreign object it encounters, even if it’s just a speck of pollen. Allergies are far from benign, however. People with allergies are three times more likely to develop asthma. There’s even some evidence that a history of allergies might increase the risk of Parkinson’s disease.
&bull More than 30 million adults in the United States get sinusitis each year. The costs of the disease&mdash inflammation of the sinuses&mdash exceeds more than $3 billion a year when you figure in all the doctor and emergency room visits, medications, tests and procedures. And that doesn’t even count days missed from work because of illness.
&bull Eighty to ninety percent of children have at least one ear infection by the time they turn three. Put another way, ear infections are the reason behind one in three doctor visits during the first five years of life. Chronic ear infections in children can lead to speech, language and cognitive impairments, as well as hearing, motor and balance loss.
While hearing loss, allergies and chronic sinus infections might be the first things that pop into your mind when you think about an ENT doctor, their expertise extends far beyond those two areas. Having trouble talking or swallowing? Feeling dizzy when you stand up? Hear a buzzing in your ears? It might be time to call an ENT. Was your child born with a cleft palate? Need her tonsils out? She’ll likely see an ENT doctor. For these doctors do more than just peer down your throat and write prescriptions. They are also surgeons, removing sinus polyps, inserting ear tubes and cochlear implants, and operating on thyroid and head and neck cancers. Some even do facial and reconstructive surgery, including nose jobs and face lifts. All of which is a roundabout way of telling you that there is much more to ENT than what you’ll read in this special section. Nonetheless, we’ve tried to highlight some of the more common areas that ENT doctors address, both from a treatment and a preventive perspective. You’ll read about the very latest in hearing aids (hint: forget everything you thought you knew about hearing aids when you read this story), the role of cochlear implants in restoring hearing to adults, and about lifestyle and other non-medical approaches you can take to keep your nose and sinuses healthy. Because, bottom line, if you can’t smell it, hear it, or taste it, you’re missing out on a big part of what makes life special.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Otolaryngology Making the Connection Why do otolaryngologists specialize in these three particular areas? Most specialists limit themselves to one body part or system. Ophthalmologists focus only on eyes. Cardiologists make their living off of hearts. ENT doctors get three body areas on which to focus their expertise. The reason is actually quite simple. The three […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":149,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/149"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58780\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}