ENT features
The Journal of the Colleges of Medicine of South Africa (JCMSA): a model for sharing research from low- and middle-income countries
A new open-access journal from South Africa offers a sustainable model to amplify research from low- and middle-income countries and rebalance global health knowledge. More than 80% of the world’s population lives in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Yet high-income...
Pioneering in simulation surgery
Plastic temporal bones transformed ear surgery training, letting trainees practise complex procedures safely before operating on patients. I attended the Stell and Maran’s surgical course in the early 70s. It was superb but, with the confidence of naivety, I thought...
GIRFT: improving ENT care through standardised clinical pathways
Clinical pathways can help to ensure consistency of approach and efficient use of resources. We hear about new developments in the UK. Variation in ENT care In today’s data-driven healthcare landscape, significant variation persists in the provision of ENT services...
Making the case for multidisciplinary ENT vasculitis clinics
How can combined ENT vasculitis clinics improve diagnosis, treatment and ongoing care for patients with AAV? This article outlines a multidisciplinary approach. Antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibody (ANCA)-associated vasculitides (AAV) are a group of rare autoimmune conditions characterised by inflammation of small-...
Operating room fires in head and neck surgery: risk factors, prevention and management
Could your next head and neck surgery spark a fire? BACO 2026 paediatric keynote speaker, Soham Roy, explains how understanding risk factors and prevention is key to patient and OR team safety. Operating room fires are an uncommon but potentially...
Patient-centred and accelerating progress: two organisations changing the landscape for rare skull base tumours
Patient-led organisations are transforming care for rare skull base tumours by connecting patients, clinicians and researchers to accelerate diagnosis, support and scientific progress. A skull base tumour diagnosis is a difficult time for any patient, but it is made more...
Call to action: dysphagia matters
Dysphagia profoundly impacts quality of life. Multidisciplinary research, like the POuCH study, aims to improve understanding, diagnosis and treatment. We take for granted the simple joys of life – meeting over a cup of coffee, breaking bread with friends or...
Optical cochlear implants: recent progress toward light-based hearing restoration
Optical cochlear implants combine optogenetics and light-based hardware to overcome limits of electrical CIs, promising sharper frequency resolution and more natural hearing. Cochlear implants (CIs) are among the most successful neuroprosthetic devices in modern medicine, restoring speech perception to hundreds...
Scarless thyroidectomy: the RABIT journey in robotic innovation
Surgeons in Bangalore share how a novel robotic approach enables scar-sparing thyroid surgery for large nodules and cancer, while reshaping global training. Can an 8 cm benign thyroid cystic nodule be removed without a big scar in the neck? Can...
3D Ai-natomy: the BACO 2026 Lionel Colledge Lecture
From Victorian stereograms to AI-generated depth maps, this lecture charts how 3D imaging is reshaping ENT anatomy – and how BACO 2026 will see it at scale. Since the 19th century, 3D technology has experienced several resurgences in the commercial...
Peter McKelvie 1932 – 2026
Peter McKelvie, an outstanding head & neck surgeon and oncologist, died on 6 February aged 93. He suffered a spontaneous subdural haemorrhage. British otolaryngology has lost the most remarkable talent of his generation. He combined a prodigious intellect with effortless...
A shifting landscape of otitis media
In light of pneumococcal vaccination programmes, is otitis media evolving to have a different natural history? Acute otitis media (AOM) is a major public health problem in children worldwide, as it is the leading bacterial infection and first cause of...
