Classics in Rhinology

I’d like to start by saying that the chapter commentary by Hopkins is one of the best written I have come across in my history of reviewing for The Journal of Laryngology & Otology, but then perhaps I might be a little biased…. I did suggest to the section editor that I might have a conflict of interest in reviewing this book, but then Classics in Rhinology turned up on the doorstep, so here I am.

The book sets out to compile the key articles in rhinology from the past 30 or so years, into one single volume. It’s an ambitious task, and the final choices will always be a little controversial. The editors started with a clear search strategy, aiming to identify the most highly cited articles across a number of aspects of rhinological disease. By their own admission, this strategy yielded a large number of review articles and omitted a number of significant practice-changing papers, which have been included as ‘Editors’ Choices’. Readers may therefore disagree with the final selection when considering a paper that has shaped their own practice, but from my reading and referencing of the literature over the last 15 years, these are the papers that have come up time and time again, and include many that I have personally cited. Each section has a preceding commentary that aims to place the articles into the context of clinical practice and research. Genuinely, for my section, the papers selected were those that formed the basis of my research career in outcomes, and it was a pleasure to be able to reflect on them.

For me, having read so many of these articles in the past, it is a great pleasure to have them combined into a single volume. Unfortunately, permission to reproduce in full was not granted for a small number of articles, or the costs of doing so proved prohibitive, and they are therefore included in abstract form only. For a few, the quality of the image reproduction lets the book down. What remains to be seen is whether this book holds sufficient interest, beyond those with a very specialist interest in the field, to invest £100 in, when many of the articles are freely available in digital format through online subscriptions. I hope so, because as I have already mentioned, that commentary by Hopkins really is quite fantastic….