SummaryIn this study quantitative techniques have been applied to smears collected from the buccal mucosa and floor of the mouth. The results display an encouraging success rate for identifying premalignant and malignant lesions. 'Intrapatient' normal smears provide a satisfactory control for comparison with pathological smears. Early results indicate that quantitative cytology could be of great value for monitoring and follow-up of suspicious lesions and provide an excellent additional diagnostic test for detecting early oral malignancy.

Summary: This study describes the development of quantitative cytological techniques and their application to oral smears. Nuclear and cell size has been measured and matched with age, sex and site in an attempt to produce a baseline for comparison with identical measurements carried out on pathological smears. The results displayed a significant variation in nuclear and cytoplasmic area between different sites. Nuclear size varied significantly with advancing age; however, this was not the case for cytoplasmic area. There was no significant variation in either criterion between males and females.

The objective of this study was to examine variables that may predict open set speech discrimination following cochlear implantation. It consisted of a retrospective case review conducted in a tertiary referral centre with a cochlear implant programme. The patients were 117 postlingually deafened adult cochlear implant recipients. The main outcome measures were Bench, Kowal, Bamford (BKB) sentence scores recorded nine months following implant activation. The variables studied were age at the time of surgery, sex, duration of hearing loss, aetiology of hearing loss, residual hearing, implant type, speech processor strategy, number of active electrodes inserted. Variables found to have a significant effect on BKB following univariate analysis were entered into a multivariate analysis to determine independent predictors. Multivariate ordinal regression analysis gave an odds ration of 1.09 for each additional year of deafness prior to implantation (confidence interval 1.06-1.13; p < 0.001). Duration of deafness prior to implantation is an independent predictor of implant outcome. It accounted for 9% of the variability. Other factors must influence implant performance.