B.J. Ferguson, MD, Guest Editor

Suman Golla, MD, Guest Editor

For over half a century, the American Academy of Otolaryngic Allergy (AAOA), the oldest subspecialty organization under the umbrella of the specialty, Otolaryngology, has provided education and research opportunities to further our understanding of the interface of allergic disorders with ear nose and throat disorders.

In this 2011 Otolaryngology Clinics of North America , we have assembled distinguished and expert authors, all of whom are members of the AAOA. This Clinics’ publication provides the most current opinion and evidence-based assessment of allergy as it relates to ear, nose, and throat disorders, as well as the lower airway—asthma, which is a frequent comorbidity of allergic rhinitis and patients with chronic rhinosinusitis, especially those with nasal polyps.

Currently, the most controversial aspect of allergy management in the United States is the role of sublingual immunotherapy (SLIT), which is not currently FDA approved, although quite commonly employed in Europe because of its excellent safety and efficacy profile. Brian Leatherman and Sandra Lin review the evidence for and against SLIT.

Even though allergy desensitization or more precisely, hyposensitization, is currently the only therapy that offers the potential for cure, and even though allergy desensitization is approaching its century anniversary, we still know little about the mechanisms of allergy desensitization. Karen Calhoun and Minka Schofield provide a quite readable article on our current understanding of allergic immunology and potential mechanisms of immunotherapy improvement.

The role of allergy in ear disorders is frequently overlooked and Jennifer Derebery and David Hurst provide articles that update our latest understanding of type I hypersensitivity in inner and middle ear disorders.

Finally, there are so many excellent contributions on diagnosis and management that to list them would be merely a relisting of the table of contents. We hope you enjoy and learn from this well-prepared, illustrated, and diagrammed volume as much as we have enjoyed working and learning from these experts.