It gives me great pleasure to be writing this editorial for the first issue of the Australian Supplement to The Journal of Laryngology & Otology to contain 100 per cent local content. I would like to thank the contributors, their senior authors, the reviewers and the JLO editorial board for making this happen.
In this supplement, we have articles covering a huge spectrum of otolaryngology (hence the rather bizarre title of this editorial).
Micro-ribonucleic acids (micro-RNAs) are the new buzz-word in molecular biology circles. Whilst we previously thought that by studying messenger RNA (mRNA) and its encoded proteins we would find answers to all our research questions, it now turns out that micro-RNAs can turn off the whole process, completely altering the mRNA message we thought we were so clever in identifying. There has been a huge amount of work done on the role of micro-RNAs in oncogenesis, but still relatively little on their involvement in head and neck cancer. The review article from Gunawardena et al. Reference Gunawardena, Fitzgerald, Morley, Hussey, Woods and Carney1 looks at what is known about micro-RNAs in laryngeal cancer, and how future research in this area might lead to new treatment modalities.
Butler and colleagues' articleReference Butler, Thavaneswaran and Lee2 assessing the safety and efficacy of implantable hearing aids provides us with excellent evidence with which to continue to progress clinically in this exciting field.
Elliott et al. Reference Elliott, Gao, Gupta, Chua, Gargya and Clark3 provide reassuring data that the finding of an incidental papillary microcarcinoma is not always bad news for the patient.
Naidoo et al. Reference Naidoo, Tan, Singhal and Wormald4 present a new quality of life instrument for patients with chronic rhinosinusitis. Given the fact that Australia has such a high prevalence of this disease, having an instrument that is tailored to the disease spectrum we all see day to day will no doubt prove to be extremely beneficial.
Chin and colleagues' paperReference Chin, Snidvongs, Sacks and Harvey5 looking at the beneficial effects of plasma technology in skull base surgery provides further evidence of the advantages of this unique tissue ablation method.
The Melbourne academic ear group provides us with an attractive new method of bone-anchored hearing aid insertion,Reference Husseman, Szudek, Monksfield, Power, O'leary and Briggs6 and an excellent quality of life paperReference Wang, Palme, Wang, Morgan, Gebski, Gilchrist and Veness7 on cutaneous squamous cell cancer of the head and neck concludes the section on original research.
Whilst we are trying to reduce the number of case reports in favour of good quality review articles, I hope the four final articlesReference Tan, Chong and Shaw8–Reference Santa Maria11 published in this edition will provide you with useful information on rare diagnoses.
