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Not just the scissors: the story of Myron Metzenbaum

Myron Metzenbaum was born in Cleveland, Ohio (USA) in 1876, the fourth of nine children. As a young man, he worked in the family’s linen store, where his father was well known to be very kind to the less fortunate...

Entrepreneurial aspirations for the otolaryngologist

Entrepreneurship is a process of identifying an idea and starting a business venture with this idea. It requires generation of a business model or plan that emphasises the value proposition for the customer. The model must identify the partners, resources,...

European power women in otolaryngology: a focus on Laura Viani, Ireland’s first female otolaryngologist

Professor Laura Viani is a Consultant Otolaryngologist at Beaumont Hospital and Temple Street University Children’s Hospital and has been a member of Council of the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland for the last 17 years. As the first female...

Sniffing out the evidence – COVID-19 and loss of sense of smell and taste

Louis Pasteur once observed: “In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind.” Professor Hopkins was certainly prepared when a few anecdotes of smell problems started to accumulate early in the pandemic’s course. Post-viral olfactory loss is nothing...

The role, aims and organisation of the 2017 IFOS World Congress

IFOS is a truly international organisation – indeed, its rules state that the Executive Committee must have representation from every continent. IFOS President, Chong Sun Kim, tells us more. Dear friends and colleagues, I am very pleased to welcome all...

Simulation: human factors scenario training

It is said that surgical training has suffered as a result of a combination of factors – through the introduction of work time restrictions such as the European Working Time Directive (EWTD) [1], a limit on the number of years...

A tribute to Mead C Killion, PhD 1939-2025

The renowned audiologist and inventor Mead Killion passed away comfortably on 3 November 2025 in Elkhorn, Wisconsin, US. Mead was known for inventing products that left us scratching our heads, trying to figure out why we hadn’t thought of them...

The role of metrics in studies of hearing and cognition

Introduction When perceiving sounds in real-world listening environments, older adults encounter several sources of degradation that can interfere with the perceptual process (Figure 1). Target signals (i.e. the sounds that a listener wants to focus on) have specific acoustic characteristics...

St Æbbe the Younger of Coldingham, patron saint of the nose

Stories of the saints are often rather dark and unpleasant – and this is certainly the case with St Æbbe, as we hear from our roving historian, John Riddington Young. In two previous articles, we have discovered the fascinating stories...