Newsletter Vol. 1 March 1998 

American Otological Society, Inc.

The American Otological Society, Inc., Annual Spring Meeting will be held at The Breakers, Palm Beach, Florida, May 9-10, 1998. Enclosed with this newsletter is the program and abstract booklet for this meeting.

All of you are encouraged to register for the Scientific Sessions. They will be held on Saturday, May 9, 1998, at 12 Noon to 5 p.m., in the Mediterranean Ballroom at The Breakers, with an AOS group member photograph to be taken immediately following. The Sunday Scientific Sessions will begin at 7 a.m. to 12 noon, in the Mediterranean Ballroom. Dr. Luetje and the Program Advisory Committee have planned an excellent program.

The PresidentÌs Annual Cocktail Party and Banquet to be held at The Breakers on Sunday evening, May 10, 1998, promises to be a gala affair with excellent food and entertainment. The cocktail party will begin at 6:30 p.m. in the Pool Area and dinner will follow at 7:30 p.m. in the Beach Club. Dr. Luetje has selected the popular ACOUSTIX International Quartet for the eveningÌs entertainment. This quartet was judged the best in the world in the International Barbershop Quartet competition. ACOUSTIX sings music that appeals to audiences of all ages. When registering for the Annual Meeting, include the AOS Banquet so you will not miss out on this wonderful evening.

AOS Council Update 

The Council of the American Otological Society, Inc., met on February 13, 1998, in San Antonio, TX. The Council members present included: Drs. Charles Luetje, President, Gregory J. Matz, Horst R. Konrad, Derald Brackmann, C. Gary Jackson, Joseph C. Farmer, Jr. Those Council members unable to attend included Drs. Julianna Gulya and Richard Chole.

Dr. Luetje appointed Drs. Sam Kinney, Chairman, Steve Harner and Myles Pensak to serve on the 1998 Audit Committee. This Committee will review the financial statements and give a report at the Annual Meeting.

Dr. Luetje presented a follow-up on the Otology/Neurotology Fellowship. A letter has been sent to the Fellowship Program Directors outlining the requirements for the MATCH. The training program is 2 years in length, will include programs that have received accreditation from ACGME as well as those who are not accredited. There will be 16 programs participating in the MATCH. The first MATCH will take place on April 6, 1998, to begin training July 1, 1999.

Dr. Luetje received 46 abstracts for the 1998 Annual Meeting. These abstracts were sent blind-authored to the Program Advisory Committee who rated the abstracts on a scale of 1-5, five being the highest score. Forty abstracts were selected for the Scientific Sessions.

Dr. Luetje has selected Dr. Robert A. Jahrsdorfer to be this yearÌs Guest of Honor at the Annual Meeting. Dr. Jack V.D. Hough will receive the Presidential Citation. Special Presidential Awards will be given to Drs. Howard P. House and George E. Shambaugh, Jr.

Dr. Derald Brackmann serves as Chairman of the Award of Merit committee and will announce the committeeÌs choice at the Sunday evening AOS Banquet

Dr. Luetje has invited the new director of NIDCD, Dr. James Battey to talk at the Scientific Session on Sunday morning.

AOS Membership Update

The Current membership in AOS totals 264: 129 active, 68 senior, 6 emeritus, 41 associates, 10 corresponding and 10 honorary members. Included in this newsletter are two obituaries notifying you of the deaths of Drs. C. Claude Cody, III and F. Blair Simmons.

Ballots were sent to the Active and Senior membership in November to vote on the proposed candidates for membership in the American Otological Society. Dr. D. Bradley Welling will be inducted into Active Membership and Chong-Sun Kim will be inducted into Corresponding Membership at the Annual Meeting.

The following members have requested to be transferred to senior status: Drs. Richard R. Gacek, Robert I. Kohut, Shokri Radpour and John J. Shea, Jr.

Once again, the Council is asking the Senior and Active members to search out good eligible candidates for active membership in the Society. A membership proposal form is enclosed with this newsletter. The proposal form for all candidates must be fully completed, signed and accompanied by the proposal letters, and submitted to the SecretaryÌs Office by September 1998.

Treasurer's Report

The balance on hand in the AOS Treasury as of January 31, 1998, was $129,704.04. At the end of September the Research Fund had reached a new quarterly high of $7,783,207. The portfolio is producing an estimated annual income of $271,199.

Call for Papers

September 1, 1998, will be the deadline for submission of abstracts for the 1999 Annual Meeting to be held in Palm Desert, CA. Forms will be available after the Spring Meeting, as this year AOS is restructuring the form to include electronic submission of abstracts and adopting the AJO format for abstracts. This will facilitate review of the abstracts, easier to score if all abstracts are in the same format, and abstracts can easily be sent to the journal to be put on the Website.

Items of Interest

The Transactions for 1996, Vol. 84, are ready for mailing. An order form is enclosed with this newsletter. The Council expressed the need for Dr. Gulya to continue to work with Lippincott-Raven to keep the cost down for printing Transactions.

The Hearing Subcommittee is scheduled to present a miniseminar, entitled ÏInfant Hearing ScreeningÓ at the 1998-AAO-HNS Annual Meeting in San Antonio, TX. Dr. Richard Miyamoto will be the moderator. Participants will include Allan Diefendorf, PhD, Brenda Lonsbury-Martin, PhD, John Jacobson, PhD, Christine Yoshinaga-Itano, PhD, Karl Horn, MD, Karen Doyle, MD, Shawna McDaniel, MS, N.Wendell Todd, MD, Nancy Sculerati, MD. The miniseminar will be held on Sept. 14, 1998, 8 to 9:30 a.m.

Audiology Scope of Practice - this continues to be an item of great concern and the Council is actively working on this issue.

Dr. Matz reported on the American College of Surgeons activities. Once again, the number one concern is physician reimbursement. The College is also spending a lot of time with HCFA rules. ACS recently purchased a new building in Chicago. 175 Otolaryngologists were initiated into the College this year. Otolaryngologists are the third largest group of new initiates.

In The Mailbag

The Council received a letter from Dr. Robert Dobie, Chair of the Medical Aspects of Noise Subcommittee, AAO-HNS, regarding Airbags Causing Hearing Loss & Tinnitus. Excerpts from letter as follows:

At our subcommittee meeting in San Francisco, the group wanted to publicize this request for information a little more widely prior to preparing a report for the Academy membership. Specifically, we have asked Dr. Maves to run a brief article again in the Academy bulletin, and we wanted to also ask the AOS and ANS whether they would be willing to publicize this request to their members. We thought that perhaps in some subsequent mailing regarding dues, minutes, or upcoming programs, AOS and/or ANS might be willing to request that members send information about such cases to the Medical Aspects of Noise Subcommittee.

The AOS Council suggest members send information directly to Dr. Dobie at University of Texas Health Science Center, Dept. of Otolaryngology, 7703 Floyd Curl Drive, San Antonio, TX 78284-7777.

The Council received a letter from Danielle N. Rastetter, a fourth year veterinary student at Ohio State University dated 7/14/97. Letter follows:

I am a fourth year veterinary student at The Ohio State University and have a severe hearing loss that I compensate for with a hearing aid, FM system, real-time captioning, lip reading, and increased sensitivity to body language. Before I applied to veterinary school, I spent countless hours searching for other hard of hearing/deaf veterinarians and information regarding how to compensate for my loss while performing the duties required of a veterinarian. Luckily, I did find several mentors that provided me with the information I needed and encouraged me to pursue my dream. But admittance into a program is only the beginning of a road that can be discouraging. At times frustration occurs due to attitudes, general hearing and communication difficulties, and searching for a means to deal with hearing problems related directly to a medical profession. Through my interactions with other hard of hearing/deaf veterinarians and veterinary students, I have come to realize that a real need is present for a medium of communication between medial professionals that are hard of hearing/deaf.

In order to create a method of communication between hard of hearing/deaf medical professionals, I chose to create an electronic mailing list. Since you may not be familiar with electronic mailing lists, I will explain how they work. All members to a mailing list send electronic mail to a central address. If a member sends an e-mail to this address it will be automatically sent to all members. If someone wants to reply via the list, it can be read by all members again. If for some reason a member wishes to reply privately, they may. Mailing lists are beneficial because one can learn from othersÌ questions/discussions. Any questions member posts are distributed to many potential answerees, and replies are typically immediate.

NOISE (Network for Overcoming Increased Silence Effectively) is intended as a forum to discuss topics of concern to hard of hearing/deaf medical professionals (human medicine, dental, nursing, veterinary, veterinary technicians, etc) world-wide. It is also intended to be a means of support by linking hard of hearing/deaf medical professionals from various backgrounds and geographical regions. NOISE will also be open to professionals closely affiliated to such individuals (i.e.: disability offices and schools of education) in order to allow these professionals a means of collecting information in order to assist hard of hearing/deaf individuals. NOISE will also be open to hard of hearing/deaf students of at least fifteen (15) years of age, who are interested in a medical career. This will allow such students a means for collecting information so they may make an educated decision about the feasibility of pursuing a medical career.

I am hoping that you may be able to help me publicize NOISE through the American Otological Society since some of your members and/or their clients may be interested in subscribing to the mailing list. If you need more information or would like me to write an article for publication, please let me know. If you do publicize NOISE, I would appreciate a copy of the article. To subscribe the NOISE mailing list, the interested party should send an e-mail message to the administrative address: listserver@lists.acs.ohio-state.edu with the BODY of the mail consisting of the following: subscribe NOISE Firstname Lastname For example: subscribe NOISE Danielle Rastetter

Since only subscribers are allowed to send to the NOISE mailing list, please make sure they send this original subscription request from the e-mail address they want to send and receive NOISE postings. They should receive a message acknowledging your subscription request. They will be added to the NOISE mailing list and begin receiving messages.

Please feel free to contact me at the return address, 1740 Canvasback Lane, Bldg 2, Columbus, OH 43215 or rastetter.12@osu.edu if you have any questions or concerns. I hope to see some of your members and/or their clients on NOISE soon! Signed: Danielle N. Rastetter

Website

Look for AOS on the World Wide Web

http://itsa.ucsf.edu/~ajo/AOS/AOS.html

The above address is the AOS home page and you will be able to view the Spring 1998 Abstracts and Spring 1998 Program.

We look forward to seeing you in Palm Beach, FL

Horst R. Konrad, M.D.

Secretary-Treasurer