Section of Laryngology & Rhinology
Michael Kuo – President
Victoria Possamai – Honorary Secretary
Another academic year for the RSM beckons. The programmes that Tim Woolford and Guri Sandhu presented, culminating in the first ‘face to face’ ENT meeting this year, both severely affected by the pandemic, set a high standard to be achieved. This year, we shall be trying to present a diverse programme to reflect the breadth of skills and practice in our specialty. We will be devoting one session to exploring psychology and leadership in surgery, learning from the perspective of the military and from performance athletes, understanding performance anxiety in surgeons and analysing what constitutes leadership in surgery. Collaboration between adult and paediatric clinicians is especially important where the pathology involved is of relatively low volume. We discuss such collaboration in the context of thyroid disease and anterior skull base disease in children. The paediatric session brings our fellows up to date on the intracapsular tonsillectomy debate, the state of the art in paediatric laryngeal reinnervation, extracorporeal life support and mucopolysacccharidosis. We also take the opportunity to reflect on whether cleft lip and plate surgery should really be an ENT discipline. In May, Ari Derowe from Tel Aviv will be the inaugural Storz Travelling Professor in laryngology and rhinology. He will address the section on ‘Paediatric Airway Frontiers’ while Raewyn Campbell from Sydney will deliver the Garnett Passe Memorial Lecture on ‘Ergonomics in Endoscopic Nasal Sinus and Skull Base Surgery’. Currently, the meetings are planned as hybrid virtual/face-to-face events.
It promises to be an exciting programme, but the Section is more than just a curator of lectures. Both the sections of laryngology & rhinology and otology will be reaching out to younger members to ensure that the Society and the programmes are relevant to them. Guri Sandhu and Chad Al Yaghchi started the timely process of reviewing the constitution and we hope that we will have a carefully considered set of recommendations to present to the AGM during this academic year. The Royal Society of Medicine has much to offer all otolaryngologists. We hope the themes presented will tempt you back to Wimpole Street.
Instagram: #RSMLnR
Twitter: @RSMLnR2021
Section of Otology
Jeremy Lavy - President
It’s a huge privilege to be the President of the Otology Section at the RSM for the coming academic year. With the enormous disruptions we’ve had over the past 18 months, we are very much hoping that as many of the meetings as possible can be held in person rather than remotely.
As an otologist whose predominant practice is in the field of hearing reconstruction and restoration, the overall focus of the year is the ear as an organ for hearing. With the past presidential address having only just been delivered in July by our outgoing President, Mr Philip Robinson, I decided to delay my own address until later in the year. We will kick the year off by asking four scientists to talk us through where we are on our understanding of the ear, how it works, and how we can measure hearing both quantitatively and, more importantly, qualitatively.
For the December meeting, I am delighted to present our Toynbee Lecturer for 2021, Professor Laura Viani, Beaumont Hospital, Dublin. This will be followed by a round table where we will look at methods and techniques of hearing reconstruction in a variety of clinical scenarios.
In the February meeting, I am looking to celebrate the Royal National Throat, Nose & Ear Hospital which closed its doors for the last time on its famous Gray’s Inn Road site at the beginning of the first lockdown. All the invited speakers have a connection with the ‘old place’. We are hoping to hold a drinks reception after the meeting for old friends of the RNTNEH to meet up.
The March meeting will comprise the Matthew Yung Short Paper presentations and a debate over whether or not the emphasis on academic research in training is inhibiting the development of surgical excellence in ENT trainees. Finally, in the May meeting we will have the presidential address and a lecture from the RSM Travelling Professor, Prof Per Caye-Thomasen, University Hospital of Copenhagen, Denmark.
I am very much looking forward to this coming year and hope that as many of you can join us for a ‘more socially normal’ RSM programme.
