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Did you ever meet Draffin on your travels?

Draffin’s rods or bipods are a well-known ENT instrument. Before their invention in 1951, the attendant anaesthetist or nurse was obliged to support the mouthgag during tonsillectomy. Their originator, David Alexander Draffin (born in 1917 in Ballybey, Co Monaghan), was...

The golden nose – reshaping the nose 100 years ago

Wolf Lűbbers (with the golden nose). Who with a crooked nose would not embrace the chance to go to bed in the evening wearing a surgical device and wake up the following morning with a straight one? And all this...

History of ENT - Freud's Friend, Fliess

Wilhelm Fliess, a Berlin rhinologist, was for many years Sigmund Freud’s closest friend and confidant. He was born in Poland in 1858. In 1887, he visited Vienna for postgraduate studies, and met the famous psychoanalyst, Freud [1]. They were immediate...

OBITUARY: Randall Payne Morton (1948 - 2025)

Randall Payne Morton. Sadly I report the recent death of Randall Payne Morton, Professor of ORL-HNS in Auckland, New Zealand, on the 11 September 2025, after a long and protracted illness. I first met and worked with Randall during his...

In memory of Iain Swan 1952–2025

Iain Swan. Iain Swan was a Senior Lecturer in Otorhinolaryngology, University of Glasgow and Consultant Otorhinolaryngologist, Glasgow Royal Infirmary and Scottish Section MRC Institute of Hearing Research 1986-2016. Iain had a happy childhood growing up in Carbeth and attended school...

Sybill Storz 1937 - 2025

Sybill Storz. Surrounded by her closest family, the internationally-renowned Tuttlingen entrepreneur Sybill Storz passed away peacefully on 28 November 2025 at the age of 88. Her family, all the employees, and the Supervisory Board of the family-owned MedTech company KARL...

Pre-clinical development of magnetic delivery of therapy to middle and inner ears

Why are we developing this technology? A key problem in drug delivery is getting the therapy to the right place in the body, which is especially challenging for targets that are small, deep and are protected or surrounded by anatomical...

Imaging in hyperparathyroidism

Following their caudal migration at eight weeks of development, the parathyroid glands normally locate posterolaterally to the upper pole of the thyroid gland at the level of the cricoid cartilage (superior parathyroid glands arising from the fourth branchial pouch and...

Staying safe during endoscopic ear surgery

There is growing interest in using rigid endoscopes rather than traditional operative microscopes to perform transcanal middle ear surgery. Rigid endoscopy provides a high resolution, wide-angle view of the tympanic cavity through minimally invasive surgical portals. In this article, Elliott...

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...