Technology is moving our speciality forward very rapidly in all domains, but none more so than in rhinology. David Whitehead looks at current and future trends. How will a surgeon justify their position in a team where artificial intelligence (AI)...
Andrew Marshall, a Consultant ENT Surgeon at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, visited 126 departments across England before publishing his recent ENT surgery national report for the Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) programme. Here, he explains how identifying unwarranted...
Kate Prior is an anaesthetist who has, quite literally, been there, done that. In this article she manages to use words on a page to bring to life some of the conditions and challenges she faced as a member of...
Ian Mackay is this year’s BACO Master, with Valerie Lund taking over for the next meeting. As the senior overseer of the conference, the role of Master is a crucial one, and Ian tells us how he has gone about...
In a world of patient-reported outcomes and patient-centred care, patient-centred research must also be considered. That is where the James Lind Alliance (JLA) comes in, as Caroline Whiting explains below. Through Priority Setting Partnerships (PSPs), it allows patients, their carers...
Many ENT head and neck surgeons are now involved in thyroid surgery. This can also include the need to explore the parathyroids, either to preserve them or indeed to resect parathyroid adenomas. David Smith, a highly experienced endocrine surgeon from...
Prof Valerie Lund caught up with friend and colleague, Prof Dr Metin Önerci, to discuss his various positions in rhinology, the FOAM programme with which he is involved, and rhinology in Turkey and the Balkan and the Central Asian region....
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed all aspects of our lives – not least medical education. With isolation being the buzzword at the moment, the internet and social media are popular sources for official and crowd-sourced content. In this article, Samantha...
This series of stories is dedicated to those of you with whom some of these moments were shared (or endured) and, above all, to my amazing and long-suffering husband, David Howard. Most of you know him as an exceptional head...
Visual cues support auditory recovery after cochlear implantation, with evidence showing cross-modal plasticity enhances speech perception and rehabilitation outcomes. Traditionally, clinical guidance around cochlear implantation has been shaped by a key concern: that reliance on visual communication, particularly speechreading, might...
Prior to the foundation of our speciality, thyroid surgery had a dubious reputation and universally dismal outcomes. Jenny Walton casts a critical eye over this dark chapter. Diseases of the thyroid gland have been referenced in historic texts for well...
7 May 2026
| Alastair Morrison Pettigrew
|
ENTA - Otology
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...