March 17th, 2011 by ChristopherChangMD in Health Tips, Opinion
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Occasionally, I see patients who have received throat swabs for strep that have come back positive… even if they have no signs or symptoms of pharyngitis.
In this situation, there are 2 main actions a physician may take (I am biased towards one):
1) Prescribe antibiotics until throat cultures are normal
2) Do nothing
Personally, if a patient is without throat symptoms and has no history of rheumatic fever or kidney damage, I would not have even bothered obtaining a strep test. What for??? Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Fauquier ENT Blog*
February 8th, 2011 by ChristopherChangMD in Health Tips, Research
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Is whispering bad for your vocal cords? For most people, the answer is yes according to research publicized in a recent New York Times article.
In the mentioned study, out of a group of 100 patients, 69 percent exhibited increased supraglottic hyperfunction with whispered voice (i.e. it was bad for the voice.) Eighteen percent had no change and 13 percent had less severe hyperfunction.
As such, though whispering is not bad for everybody, it is for most people and as such, the safest thing to do if the vocal cords are damaged whether by infection or trauma is to rest your voice. If you have to talk, do not whisper, but rather talk in a soft voice.
The best way to think about injured vocal cords is to talk in an analogy. Laryngitis is like a badly sprained ankle. In this scenario, talking is like walking and screaming is like running. So just like you would rest the sprained ankle and not walk on it in order for it to recover as quickly as possible, you should refrain from talking in order for the laryngitis to recover as quickly as possible. Where does whispering fall in this analogy? Probably equivalent to running on a sprained ankle.
Read more about voice problems here.
REFERENCE: “Laryngeal hyperfunction during whispering: reality or myth?” J Voice. 2006 Mar;20(1):121-7.
*This blog post was originally published at Fauquier ENT Blog*
March 12th, 2010 by Shadowfax in Better Health Network, Health Tips, Opinion
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RCentor has an interesting article on Sore Throats and Pharyngitis over at MedRants. He writes:
There is a new trend in pharyngitis that has taken hold amongst emergency physicians – the use of steroids to provide symptom relief.
I too have noticed this, and I completely agree with Dr Centor that while this is a highly effective treatment, it needs to be used with some caution. For our practice, this has been pushed by the ENTs. It has been our experience that when we see someone with a really bad sore throat or even with a peritonsillar abscess, 100% of the time the instruction from the ENTs has been to administer steroids. While the data is underwhelming (pain relief on average six hours quicker with steroids), the truth is that for a really bad case of tonsillitis, steroids work. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Movin' Meat*