Welcome from the Director


The Department of Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery at Johns Hopkins offers specialized care in the diagnosis and treatment of diseases affecting the head and neck region. Our faculty, residents, and staff devote their professional lives to delivering outstanding patient care to our patients and to bringing scientific advances to the benefit of our patients.

There are four key components to our mission:

• To advance knowledge of the diseases and physiological systems that are a part of otolaryngology—head and neck surgery.
• To deliver outstanding patient care in all aspects of the discipline.
• To train the future leaders of the specialty.
• To promote the mission of Johns Hopkins Medicine through collaborative
   programs and interactions.

Our website provides an overview of our people and our programs. We also have specific links for patients and for referring physicians who wish to have prompt access to our specialists.

The Department also has Centers of Excellence that deal with specific diseases and therapies such as: Voice Disorders, Head and Neck Cancer, Cochlear Implants, Hearing Disorders, Balance (vestibular) Disorders, Facial Paralysis, Sinus Diseases, Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery and Dentistry and Oral Surgery.

Additional information about activities in the Department is available from our newsletters and expertly written articles, which can be accessed here.


Lloyd B. Minor, M.D.
Andelot Professor and Director


Johns Hopkins Otolaryngology—Head & Neck Surgery at Green Spring Station

Johns Hopkins Otolaryngology—Head & Neck Surgery has expanded its clinical outpatient services with the opening of a new office at Green Spring Station in Lutherville, Maryland. Johns Hopkins Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery at Green Spring Station offers patient consultations and specialized services in the diagnosis and treatment of a wide range of conditions affecting the head and neck region.

Johns Hopkins Otolaryngology—Head & Neck Surgery at Green Spring Station
10751 Falls Road
Suites 406-408 (Falls Concourse)
Lutherville, MD 21093
Phone: 410-616-7300


For more information, please visit: www.hopkinsmedicine.org/oto-at-greenspring


For Your Information


To view more news, information, meeting announcements and highlights pertaining to our dedicated faculty and department, please click on our News/ media access button to the upper left, or click here



Once again The Johns Hopkins Hospital is the "Best of the Best" in U.S.News & World Report's Honor Roll of "America's Best Hospitals" for the 18th consecutive year, with Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery again ranking #1

“Yet again, the magazine, along with medical specialists across the nation, has affirmed the excellence of our faculty physicians, our nurses and our staff,” said a joint letter announcing the good news from Edward D. Miller, M.D., dean and CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine, and Ronald R. Peterson, president of The Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System. “We say it each year and we mean it: This recognition is a tribute to them and to the community physicians whose contributions to Johns Hopkins Medicine are significant.”

CENTER FOR HEARING AND BALANCE SEMINAR SERIES SPECIAL SEMINAR


Keith R. Kluender
Professor of Psychology
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Speech perception within a biologically-realistic
information-theoretic framework


Host: Eric Young, PhD

Thursday, December 4, 2008,

4:00 PM

Talbot Library, Traylor 709

Refreshments available



Medical Mysteries on voice dystonia with Dr. Paul Flint, Cummings Professor and Director of Laryngeal and Voice Disorders of the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions  


Spare the Voice, to Avoid Spoiling the Singer
Tufano’s new tools alleviate vocal damage in oft-tricky thyroid surgery.

It’s a tradition to sing Handel’s “I Know That My Redeemer Liveth”—the soprano aria with the killer high G—the Sunday after Easter at my church. When I stood up with music in hand last spring, I thought it might be the last solo I’d ever sing. I just let that G rip from the back of the church. People in the pews jumped. To read the rest of the story, please click here


Women go bald, too

The term "male pattern baldness" is familiar to most people. But many women, too, suffer from hair loss, says Lisa Earnest Ishii, assistant professor for facial plastic and reconstructive surgery in the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine's department of otolaryngology and neck surgery. To read the complete story, please click here


Ethnic cosmetic surgeries rising

The "plastic" in plastic surgery comes from the Greek for plastikos, meaning to mold or shape - originally often with a flap of skin. Increasingly, however, the shapes and textures of the human body are changed with the use of creatively engineered man-made or petroleum byproducts - especially in cosmetic surgery. To continue with the story, please click here

3 presentations by Dr. Lloyd Minor, "The Impact of Communications Disorders on Quality of Life"; Dr. Randall Reed "The Science of Underlying Sensory Function and Dysfunction" and Dr. John Niparko "Clinical Approaches to Enhancing Auditory Function" were all apart of the 14th Annual Dean's Symposium, held in Palm Beach Florida on January 23, 2008. To enjoy these unique slide/video presentations, please select the presentation listed below.

To access "The Impact of Communications Disorders on Quality of Life" by Dr. Lloyd Minor, please click here

To access "The Science of Underlying Sensory Function and Dysfunction" by
Dr. Randall Reed, please click here

To access "Clinical Approaches to Enhancing Auditory Function" by Dr. John Niparko, please click here

Jamming and the brain

A Johns Hopkins surgeon who says he is 'totally obsessed' with music studied what happens during the creative process when professional pianists improvise jazz riffs.

By Chris Emery |Sun Reporter June 29, 2008


What happens in a jazz musician's brain during an improv session? Where does all that creativity come from? That's what Dr. Charles Limb, a Johns Hopkins surgeon with a passion for music, wanted to find out.

Click here to read the article

Superior Canal Dehiscence - Lloyd Minor, M.D. and John Carey M.D. diagnose and treat a patient with this rare condition on ABC-TV's "20/20 Medical Mysteries".

 

Congratulations .... The new Hearing web site has been completed and launched. The url is www.hopkinsmedicine.org/hearing

The New 2008 issue of HeadLines is now available on-line, just click here to download your .pdf copy

Checking immune response to help sinusitis

BALTIMORE, April 30 (UPI) -- Understanding the immune response in the nose may help treat those who suffer from sinusitis and asthma, U.S. researchers suggest.
The findings on how the white blood cells are triggered in the mucous membrane lining, published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, may help find drugs that combat chronic inflammation.

Specifically, holding back B7-related proteins -- called B7 homologs -- which are responsible for starting up the white blood cell response in a pathogen attack may help combat the cascade of "feel-awful" symptoms associated with sinusitis and asthma.

"The inside surface of our nose and sinuses is much more than a protective cover, and we have good scientific evidence to show that epithelial cells on these mucosal membranes are very powerful mediators -- middlemen -- in diseases that result in inflammation," senior study investigator Dr. Jean Kim of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in says in a statement. To read the rest of the article, click here



Dr. Maura Gillison, a Johns Hopkins oncologist, found that HPV causes some head and neck cancers, as well as cervical cancer. (Sun photo by Kim Hairston / April 11, 2008)
HPV-related oral cancers rise among younger men

Hopkins doctor credited with linking tumors and sexually transmitted virus


The sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer in women has now been linked to an uptick of throat, tonsil and tongue cancers - in a younger and healthier group of patients than doctors have ever seen before. To read the rest of the article, please click here

Sandra Lin, M.D. Assistant Professor of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at Johns Hopkins, discusses the pros and cons of sublingual immunotherapy in her latest podcast. Please click here to listen

"A Minor Balancing Act"
How one otolaryngologist found a way to set the world right for patients with a mysterious form of dizziness.

Richard Christian’s life came unhinged with a belly laugh. In the fall of 2004, the Illinois high school teacher was tailgating with his family before a Notre Dame football game when his youngest son piped up that he was now old enough to drink a beer. The boy’s older brother shot back: “You got about as much chance of getting a beer as of catching a leprechaun in this football game.” Christian, their athletically built 55-year-old father who had a long record of robust health, doubled over with laughter. And then, he just kept on tilting forward until he collapsed...... To read the complete story, click here

"Like Something from Nothing"

When the Humvee started to roll over during a high-speed turn near iraq's border with Kuwait on the early afternoon of August 12, 2005 a piece of Michael Flecher's top-mounted turret gun caught him in the face, impaling him beneath the heavy machine moments later.... To read the remaining story, click here

SURGICAL PLUGS IN EAR’S BONE STOPS STRANGE FORM OF SEVERE DIZZINESS
-- Patients have sometimes suffered decades without relief

Rapid, uncontrollable eye movements that swish and thump as the eyes roll and blink. Bones that creak as the body moves. Sudden dizziness, loss of balance. Falling down after a loud noise, such as the sound of your own voice, a cough or even laughter. These are hallmarks of a debilitating and relatively rare syndrome known as superior canal dehiscence that has stumped clinicians for a long time.

To read the complete story, click here


Brain scans tune in to personal nature of improvising music

From Eric Clapton to Miles Davis to Yo-Yo Ma, we've long heard that when musicians improvise, they're engaged in an intensely personal pursuit. A pair of scientists have scanned musicians' brains and now say that's true.

More precisely, when musicians improvise, they're using the same part of the brain that responds to a simple request: Tell me about yourself.

In new findings, researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders say they have located the region of the brain — the medial prefrontal cortex — that lights up when musicians improvise. It's the same area we all use when we're talking about ourselves — who we are, what makes us tick.

It makes perfect sense to Charles Limb, a Hopkins researcher and jazz saxophonist who holds a joint faculty appointment at Hopkins' music conservatory. "Because the person is spontaneously composing, they really are revealing themselves musically," he says. "It's like your own musical autobiography." To read the complete story click here

Brain Science Shows How Musical Creativity is Unleashed
Scientists Find That People Under the Influence of Music Lose Inhibitions
By Lee Dye

Research scientist Charles J. Limb could hardly believe his own ears when he listened to the sounds of jazz improvisation created by a musician inside a magnetic resonance imager used to study the workings of the human brain. There is barely room for one person inside the brain scanner, much less a person with a piano. Yet the sounds were real, and they were, as Limb put it, "fantastic."

Limb, who is also a jazz saxophonist, had turned to the scanner, and a few fellow musicians, for an answer to a question that haunts him every time he settles in for a little jazz improvisation.
To read the complete story click here









Attention All Otolaryngology Residents, you may now access our Resident Rotations - Goals, Objectives, and Responsibilities on-line. Just click here or go to Education/Residency Programs/