Medical Mnemonics
Otorhinolaryngology (ENT) Mnemonics
Otorhinolaryngology moves between the clinic and the emergency airway, and its examinations reward crisp recall of anatomy, tuning-fork logic and red-flag syndromes. The mnemonics below capture the lists that recur most: the vestibular tests, the causes of epistaxis, the classification of chronic ear disease and the presentations that signal malignancy. They also cover the airway and foreign-body scenarios where a single anatomical fact guides management. Use each acronym as a retrieval hook for knowledge you already hold, rather than a shortcut around understanding. Every entry is tied to a core NMC competency and to decisions you will make on real patients.
MedNext Academy | 3 min read
Otorhinolaryngology (ENT) Mnemonics
Otorhinolaryngology moves between the clinic and the emergency airway, and its examinations reward crisp recall of anatomy, tuning-fork logic and red-flag syndromes. The mnemonics below capture the lists that recur most: the vestibular tests, the causes of epistaxis, the classification of chronic ear disease and the presentations that signal malignancy. They also cover the airway and foreign-body scenarios where a single anatomical fact guides management. Use each acronym as a retrieval hook for knowledge you already hold, rather than a shortcut around understanding. Every entry is tied to a core NMC competency and to decisions you will make on real patients.
Otorhinolaryngology moves between the clinic and the emergency airway, and its examinations reward crisp recall of anatomy, tuning-fork logic and red-flag syndromes. The mnemonics below capture the lists that recur most: the vestibular tests, the causes of epistaxis, the classification of chronic ear disease and the presentations that signal malignancy. They also cover the airway and foreign-body scenarios where a single anatomical fact guides management. Use each acronym as a retrieval hook for knowledge you already hold, rather than a shortcut around understanding. Every entry is tied to a core NMC competency and to decisions you will make on real patients.
Mnemonics and expansions
- **COWS:** Cold Opposite, Warm Same. The direction of the fast phase of caloric nystagmus in an intact vestibular system.
- **CENTOR:** Cough absent, Exudate, Nodes (tender anterior cervical), Temperature (fever). Estimates the likelihood of group A streptococcal tonsillitis.
- **Semon's law:** Abductor fibres of the recurrent laryngeal nerve fail before adductor fibres. In a progressive nerve lesion the cord first sits near the midline, then moves to the cadaveric position.
- **Waldeyer's ring (APTL):** Adenoid, Tubal tonsils, Palatine tonsils, Lingual tonsil, from top to bottom. The lymphoid ring guarding the entrance to the aerodigestive tract.
- **KLASS:** Kiesselbach's plexus formed by the anterior ethmoidal, sphenopalatine, superior labial and greater palatine arteries. The vessels of Little's area, the commonest site of anterior epistaxis.
- **Central Safe, Attic Attack:** A central tympanic perforation is the safe tubotympanic type; an attic or marginal perforation is the unsafe type with cholesteatoma. Attic and marginal disease carries the risk of intracranial complications.
- **To Zanzibar By Motor Car:** Temporal, Zygomatic, Buccal, Marginal mandibular, Cervical. The five extratemporal branches of the facial nerve from top to bottom.
- **Trotter's triad:** Conductive deafness, trigeminal neuralgia, palatal immobility, all ipsilateral. Points to an advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma invading the skull base.
- **JNA: adolescent boy, never biopsy:** Juvenile nasopharyngeal angiofibroma: adolescent male, recurrent profuse unilateral epistaxis, nasopharyngeal mass. Biopsy risks massive bleeding; diagnose on contrast imaging and treat after embolisation.
- **HINTS:** Head-Impulse, Nystagmus, Test of Skew. A bedside battery that separates a peripheral vestibular cause from a central one in acute vertigo.
- **Right is wider, shorter, straighter:** The right main bronchus is wider, shorter and more vertical than the left. Explains why an aspirated foreign body usually lodges on the right.
- **Coin in coronal:** A swallowed coin in the oesophagus lies flat (coronal) on the AP film; a tracheal coin lies edge-on (sagittal). The orientation on plain film localises the coin.
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