Declan Costello, MA, MBBS, FRCS(ORL-HNS),
Consultant Ear,
Nose and Throat Surgeon,
Wexham Park Hospital,
Slough, Berkshire, UK.
TW / X: @Voicedoctor_uk
In our last edition, we featured the amazing work of Prof Shahed Quraishi and his ENT Masterclass® – the organisation had recently celebrated its 20th anniversary with an event at the Royal Society of Medicine in London. As many of you will know, ENT Masterclass® provides free training around the world and goes from strength to strength. As I write this editorial, I am looking forward to going to China with Prof Q in the next few days to give lectures in Beijing and Wuhan – I will report back!
The calendar for 2026 is packed with international meetings, and we particularly look forward to the flagship UK meeting, BACO, which takes place in July in Glasgow. One of the keynote speakers is Soham Roy, and he tells us about fires in the operating room, and how to avoid them. Looking ahead to the IFOS meeting in Istanbul in September, our good friend Johan Fagan highlights a project that looks to give a voice to research in under-represented parts of the world. The first sentence of his article is particularly striking: “More than 80% of the world’s population lives in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), yet most published medical research originates from and is curated by journals in high-income countries.” His article makes for fascinating reading about how the inequalities can be redressed.
Simulation has become more and more important in medical education, and the name of Alistair Pettigrew will be well known to many (if not all) ENT surgeons in the UK. His plastic temporal bone simulation models have been very widely used for decades – I certainly benefitted from using them during my own training. He is now retired from his work as an ENT consultant, but his contribution to surgical simulation via his temporal bones is huge.
‘Efficiency’ and ‘streamlining’ are watchwords in healthcare systems throughout the world at the moment, and the GIRFT (Getting it Right First Time) initiative in the UK is looking to find ways to improve standards and reduce variation in practice across the country. Sujata De and Jeremy Davis tell us more.
Looking ahead to Jul/Aug 2026, we will be sending out a supplement focusing on laryngology and snoring; if you are one of our commercial partners and you would like to advertise to our 35,000 readers, please do make contact.
Going back to the subject of international meetings, the ENT & Audiology News team was recently at the CEORL-HNS Congress in Gothenburg in April, where it was great to catch up with many friends and colleagues. Look out for our full conference report in ENT & Audiology News Jul/Aug 2026.
