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Introduction Tuberculosis is a disease of diversified presentation. It affects almost all organs in the body, and otorhinolaryngological, head and neck involvement is not an exception. Objective To increase awareness about the different clinical presentations of otorhinolaryngological, head and neck tuberculosis, the techniques employed to diagnose it, and to assess the response to the treatment. Methods We conducted a prospective study of 114 patients who presented primarily with otorhinolaryngological, head and neck tuberculosis. Routine blood investigations, chest radiographs, the tuberculin test, and sputum examination for the presence of acid-fast bacilli were performed in all cases. Site-specific investigations were performed in relevant cases only. The patients were treated according to the antitubercular treatment (ATT) regimen recommended by the Indian Ministry of Health and Family Welfare's National Tuberculosis Elimination Program (NTEP), and they were followed up clinically two and six months after starting the ATT. Results Tubercular cervical lymphadenopathy was the most common clinical presentation (85.96%), followed by deep neck abscess (5.27%). Fine-needle aspiration cytology proved to be a reliable tool for the diagnosis of tubercular lymphadenopathy. Improvement at the end of 2 and 6 months of the ATT was observed in 90.35% and 96.50% of the cases respectively. Conclusion The diagnosis of otorhinolaryngological, head and neck tuberculosis requires a high index of clinical suspicion, and the ATT proved to be very effective in reducing the severity of the disease.

OBJECTIVE: Both Otologists and patients mutually hope for an improvement in hearing and a functional benet from an ear surgery to correct unilateral conductive hearing loss that has been reported as the closure of air-bone gap or reduction in air conduction thresholds. While these provide a measure of technical success of the operation, they may not always translate into real life benet for the patient. This is because listening is a binaural task and benet to the patient is determined by numerous factors, of paramount importance is hearing in the non-operated ear. With the aim, to estimate patient benet in terms of subjective hearing gain after type I tympanoplasty, we reviewed the Belfast 15/30 dB rule of thumb. METHOD: A 100 cases of chronic otitis media with inactive mucosal disease having conductive hearing loss, who had undergone type I tympanoplasty were included. Hearing was assessed using pure tone audiogram with average of, .5, 1, 2 & 4Hz and a detailed questionnaire regarding the subjective perception of hearing was obtained pre and 6 month post-operatively which was correlated with Belfast 15/30 dB rule of thumb. RESULT: The predictive value as per pure tone audiometry with Belfast 15/30 dB rule of thumb is 89% with a conclusion that the objective hearing improvement (88.1%) does not necessarily transform into patients' perception of hearing improvement (78.4%) CONCLUSION: Hearing is a binaural function and this should always be kept in mind while operating on unilateral/ asymmetric hearing loss patients as mere closure of air-bone gap or reduction in air conduction threshold might not conclude patients' perception of hearing gain. Belfast 15/30 dB rule of thumb has proved to be a valuable tool in predicting the subjective improvement of hearing