Talk:Otorhinolaryngology

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Tjones32.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 05:54, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Why do they exist?

Just curious why someone would decide to go to an otolarynhgthist. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.9.45.237 (talk) 19:26, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Maybe because they have an extreme sinus, nose, throat, ear problem? Probably the vast majority of their patients go to a "regular" (nonspecialist) physician 1st, then get referred because the problem is too complex. I was personally referred to one when I was 13 years old, to have surgery on my nose & sinuses. As for your topic heading, why do any specialists exist? Why not just have all doctors be "jacks-of-all-trades"; better yet, why not just have everybody be "generalists", doing away completely with specializaton and go back to a barter economy. Is that what you'd like? Have you ever heard of the concept of the "division of labor"?173.16.124.196 (talk) 18:29, 2 July 2009 (UTC)—Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.16.124.196 (talk) 18:19, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Hi all, I am interested in standardizing and cleaning up this wikipedia site. I don't believe the current "Topics" section is particularly well organized, nor is it very helpful to people (especially potential patients) to have various sections on surgical techniques like free tissue transfer. Perhaps we instead name this section "Specialties and Related Conditions" - and implement a separate section on tests used by ENT docs so patients might get some guidance into what an ENT can help them with. Thoughts? --Nicoespi (talk) 17:41, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

What kind of tests would you like to add to the new section? Prophylax (talk) 23:31, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

i

i want to be one. help me. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.215.150.254 (talk • contribs)

Well, finish primary school and secondary school, go to university, get a medical degree and apply for specialist training in otolaryngology. Simple. JFW | T@lk 18:19, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Did you become one? Prophylax (talk) 23:31, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

ENT

"A somewhat outdated, but nevertheless commonly used, term for this speciality is ENT (ear nose and throat)." This seems to be a put-down of the majority of people, who use ordinary, easy-to-remember English terms rather than medical terminology. --Singkong2005 00:03, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

I just got a job at an eye and ear hospital. I now sort all of the incoming mail. Leaning why the mail for ENT goes in the same box as the mail for Otolaryngology was useful to me. -- Ianiceboy 11:43, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. It's not really outdated... In fact it's a very commonly used term. Prophylax (talk) 00:32, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

otorhinolaryngology

hopiakuta 00:02, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

International Leaning

This article only has a US-angle (and, contrary to popular belief there is a world outside of the USA), can someone change it so that it has different areas for different countries - for instance, training in the United Kingdom is very different to that undertaken in the states? --CapFan —Preceding comment was added at 14:33, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Now there is UK mentioned in the article. Are there other countries that should be added to the page? Prophylax (talk) 23:32, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Pronunciation

Aww what, no pronunciation key and example? C'mon someone muster up the pronunciation key for this, the hardest word to pronounce in the English language :P ^SyBer_WoLff 02:57, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Looks like this has been added. Prophylax (talk) 23:33, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Etymology

User:Avg inserted an etymology for the term otolaryngology (on August 12, 2007) which is quite misleading. Many medical and scientific modern Greek terms (such as the word for biology, biorhythm, and xenoglossy) don't come from from Ancient Greek but from Neolatin compounds (usually via German or French) which in their turn are based on ancient Greek roots. This means that the English word otolaryngology is cognate to Greek ὠτολαρυγγολογία, since they are both derived from the Neolatin 'construction'. Stating that a word is a derivate of another word while, in fact, they are cognates is misleading. In this respect, the article should either just include the Greek roots, or, alternatively, also include the cognate modern Greek word provided that the relationship of the latter to the corresponding English term will be explicitly stated. Note, that this is the way every other wiki-article on a theory/concept which is described by a Neolatin word based on classical Greek roots deals with this kind of etymological confusion (see also agnotology). --Omnipaedista (talk) 19:40, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

The etymology given in the article has changed since 2009, but it may still be incorrect for the reason given above. It is not clear that the "etymology" given is not just original research by various editors. I have requested a citation to support the etymology given, and will remove it if no citation is provided. It is not clear that it is appropriate to give etymology here, anyway. Wikipedia is not a dictionary. The etymology of an article's title is not in general relevant to the topic of an article. This article's proper topic is "the study of ear, nose, and throat conditions", not the word otolaryngology.--Srleffler (talk) 03:43, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

Seems kind of weird to comment on this so late, but describing any of the words involved as “cognates” is improper. Cognates are lexemes which have descended into two or more sister languages stemming from the same lexeme in a common ancestor language, not just two words that are the same/related in two languages. The word “television” in English is not a cognate to French “télevision” as they did not arrive from a common-ancestor-language word, but were instead both borrowing from a newly coined Neolatin term. The important distinction here being necessary is that cognates demonstrate full sound and semantic mutations of related languages and allow us to learn what rules lead to a sound shift. While borrowings do not, they instead demonstrate either none (learned) or some (semi-learned) of the accompanying sound shifts. “Ear” is the cognate to “ὠτός”, not the “oto—” of otorhinolaryngology.

To bring this around to something “actionable” the description that exists now as “a combination of New Latin combining forms … dervived from four Ancient Greek words” is linguistically accurate, and again no cognates are involved. --Puellanivis (talk) 17:00, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

Please correct name

The correct name is Otorhinolaryngology and this should be the name of the article. It may be commonly referred to as Otolaryngology, but that is an incomplete name and should not be the title of the article. Afil (talk) 21:28, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

To be fair, the correct term for the entire specialty is: otorhinolaryngology - head and neck surgery. Prophylax (talk) 23:34, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Many people don't seem to know the extent of what otorhinolaryngology encompasses... there are many other subspecialties aside from just otology, rhinology, and laryngology. Prophylax (talk) 23:34, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Requested move

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: consensus to move the page, per the discussion below. Dekimasuよ! 23:37, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

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Otolaryngology → Otorhinolaryngology – That term is more correct because ORL also studies nose ( ῥίς (rhís, “nose”), genitive: ῥινός (rhinós)) not only ear and throat, all the other Wikipedias use it (check it if you don't believe me), it's an international term, the name of specialization is otorhinolaryngology worldwide, that term is used by the majority of the ORL (not OL) specialists 93.136.62.213 (talk) 11:46, 8 October 2014 (UTC). 93.136.62.213 (talk) 11:46, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

• Support. The common name for the specialty. -- Necrothesp (talk) 12:52, 8 October 2014 (UTC)
• Support. Makes sense. Asturkian (talk) 12:53, 8 October 2014 (UTC)
• Support --WS (talk) 16:08, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Does the rhino face extinction?

I've no particular opinion on whether a rhino belongs within oto?laryngology. I did rerhinotize the article -- not because of my own understanding of what was inherently better, but simply in accordance with both the article title and what I read above. This was reverted by 72.234.41.245, who didn't explain himself where he should have, but did post the following on his own talk page:

The name of this speciality has been changed from Otolaryngology to Otorhinolaryngology because the latter is the "proper" name.

The trade body of this group of doctors is the American Board of Otolaryngology.

A Google Ngram of this word is illuminating with the usage split about 7.5:1.

And apart from anything else you confused the hell out of me and I lost about half an hour working out what Otorhinolaryngology was and researching and correcting this.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Otorhinolaryngology%2COtolaryngology&year_start=1880&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2COtorhinolaryngology%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2COtolaryngology%3B%2Cc0

Keep up the good work!

Steve

The ngram to which Steve links is indeed impressive. This does not mean that it's decisive. However, it is evidence; whereas the only two arguments for rhino-retention in the section "Requested move" above are are accuracy and (from Necrothesp, without accompanying evidence) commonness of use. -- Hoary (talk) 01:09, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

Hello, I am the person that requested the move. The anonymous user above states that the term Otorhinolaryngology confused the hell out of him and, well, for me it was quite the opposite — the term otolaryngology confused me very much. In my language we also use this Latin term and we always say it as ORL not OL. I don't know why the English language threw "rhino" (nose) out of specialty's name (probably for the easier pronunciation which is pointless), but in most other languages the ORL term is more frequent and here are Google Ngrams to prove it: German, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian. Google Ngrams don't offer other languages so these are all. As you can see, in all of them ORL is much more common and if somebody, whose mother tongue is not English but either one of those languages or most other world languages, will go searching internet and Wikipedia for ORL, not OL and therefore that should be the name of the article. Also, look at the article name for all other Wikipedias. And not just because of that, but because of accuracy, as you mentioned. ORL is for noses as well as for ears and throats. 78.0.208.231 (talk) 12:50, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

Should the full name "otorhinolaryngology - head and neck surgery" be used instead? The specialty encompasses so many more subspecialties than just otology, rhinology, and laryngology. Even the name suggested here doesn't do the specialty justice. Prophylax (talk) 23:36, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Correction suggestion

"Latissimus is another word for back in the medical field as well as rectus abdominis which is your abdominal area" This is not an accurate statement, as those muscle names are not "another word" for those body regions. 162.211.72.10 (talk) 12:13, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Looks like this is no longer in the article. Prophylax (talk) 23:37, 9 September 2024 (UTC)