The Leadership of Stanford Otolaryngology:
A historical perspective
About Us
2023
We are blessed to belong to a medical community where we have the privilege of serving people. Gratifications are common as we help heal our patients in clinics and operating rooms or work in research laboratories to develop better treatments and cures for diseases that afflict our populations.
Beyond that, we are in a coveted position of educating generations of future healers and leaders who will solve the problems that we cannot today.
Our specialty, otolaryngology – head and neck surgery (OHNS), is fortunate to belong to both surgery and medicine. The problems that our patients experience often affect their very identity – how they look, speak, hear, smell, and taste. Hence, as a field, we are uniquely positioned to benefit from and contribute to the advances in science and technology happening on this campus and beyond. When we help our patients in such personal ways that impact how they experience life, we make them members of the Stanford family as well. We are proud of the culture of inclusivity that permeates our community. It serves as the very foundation of our future endeavors.
The historical caption reads (the stylistic description is preserved for the historical accuracy): "Mrs. John P. Watney of Redwood City keeps Jacqueline preoccupied while Dr. Mark Rafaty, resident in otolaryngology, and nurse Johan Baker check equipment before hearing test. Aided by computers, Stanford University medical researchers can now measure the slightest hearing loss in the youngest infants."
Photo by Edgar W.D. Holcomb, San Francisco.
2023
Stanford Otolaryngology — Head & Neck Surgery is ranked #1 in the country by US News and World Report for the second consecutive year.
2022
Stanford Otolaryngology — Head & Neck Surgery is ranked #1 in the country by US News and World Report
2021
New chair, Dr. Konstantina Stankovic, accepts the leadership position. Our faculty hold 91 competitive grants and an annual research budget exceeds $13 million.
2020
54 faculty (18 Professors, 11 Associate Professors, 16 Assistant Professors, 9 Instructors). An additional 7 affiliated teaching faculty include 5 at the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center and 2 at the Palo Alto Veteran’s Administration Medical Center. We also have an expanding panel of 11 affiliated community otolaryngologists in our University Health Care Alliance offices in San Ramon (3), San Jose (1), Los Gatos (3), and Emeryville (3). A member of our Packard Children’s Health Alliance is located in Walnut Creek. Search on PUBMED for “Stanford Otolaryngology” lists 367 publications.
2019
New Stanford Hospital opens. OHNS department grows from 5 to 53 faculty members from 2003-2019.
2018
Stanford OHNS achieves #2 ranking on US News and #5 recipient of NIH funding.
New Stanford Children’s Hospital opens.
2017
Professor of Surgery Levi Cooper Lane, a founder of the Cooper Medical College (Predecessor of Stanford School of Medicine) (1828-1902) is remembered today by the Stanford School of Medicine’s Lane Library (initially founded from his extensive book collection) and the Lane Surgery Center (named in 2017) in which most OHNS surgery is conducted.
Residency expanded from 4 to 5 per year, T32 program begins.
2015
Stanford Ear Institute opens.
2012
Stanford Initiative to Cure Hearing Loss launched.
2006
Perkins Microsurgery Laboratory dedicated.
2005
Residency expanded from 3 to 4 per year.
2004
Stanford Cancer Center opens.
2004
Department moves to new academic home at 801 Welch Road.
2003
In 2003, the small program which had been a division of surgery for nearly a century, became and independent department with newly recruited Robert K. Jackler (1954-) as its inaugural chair. The establishment of OHNS as an independent department heralded a period of rapid growth.
2000
Richard L. Goode (1935-2019) serves as interim chair from 2000 to 2003. Dr. Goode played an outsized role in the advancement of the fields of facial plastic surgery, sleep surgery and the physiology of hearing.
1991
Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital opens.
1980
For 20 years, from 1980 to 2000 the Division of Otolaryngology — Head & Neck Surgery was ably led by Willard E. Fee Jr. (1943-).
1977
First post-residency fellowship established (facial plastics/head & neck surgery). Beginning emphasis on post-residency, sub-specialty training which has grown to encompass programs in all sub-specialties of OHNS.
1970
Dr. Richard Goode (1935-2019) joined the faculty of the School of Medicine in 1966 as an assistant professor of surgery, specializing in otolaryngology. He helped shape the field of facial plastic surgery and is known for advances he made in sleep surgery.
In 1970, he invented the Goode T-tube, a ventilator used to drain infections of the middle ear, which is still in use today. He also developed surgical nasal splints, implantable hearing aids and contributed to research on the development of the cochlear implant, an electronic device that can help to provide a sense of sound to a person who is deaf or severely hard of hearing.
1965
F. Blair Simmons (1930-1998) serves as head of the Division of Otolaryngology from 1965 to 1980 and establishes Stanford as a true academic program.
1964
F. Blair Simmons (1930-1998) implants the first multichannel cochlear implant in collaboration with Stanford electrical engineering.
1959
Stanford School of Medicine school remained in San Francisco until 1959 when it moved to Palo Alto. In the early years in Palo Alto, the program was run by community practitioners Lee Shahinian (1909-2004) and William F. Baxter (1924-2008).
1940
Robert C. McNaught (1906-1986), remembered for the McNaught laryngeal keel, led the program from 1940 to 1957. Like many of his contemporaries McNaught chose to remain in San Francisco when the program moved south in 1959.
1911
Edward Cecil Sewall (1875-1957) was the next Chief, serving from 1911 to 1940. Sewall was a Stanford graduate in the class of 1898 and the valedictorian of the Cooper Medical School in 1902. Originally practicing eye, ear, nose, and throat, he limited his practice to otolaryngology from 1914. He served as Chief of Otolaryngology for the time of his joining the faculty at the inception of the Stanford School of Medicine until his retirement in 1940. Sewall is remembered for an orbital retractor which bears his name. He and his wife Amy had no children. They left a generous endowment to further the goals of Stanford’s otolaryngology department which now supports five OHNS faculty members and has a market value of over $20 million.
1909
The Cooper Medical School became Stanford University School of Medicine in 1909. Adolph Barkan (1844-1935) was appointed the first professor of structures and diseases of the eye, ear, and larynx and the first Chief of Otolaryngology at the newly formed school. The Barkan collection of Otolaryngology and Ophthalmology books provides a superb historical resource in Stanford’s Lane Library,
1896
Professor of Surgery Levi Cooper Lane (1828-1902) was a pioneer head and neck surgeon. A founder of the Cooper Medical College (Predecessor of Stanford School of Medicine), he publishes Surgery of the Head and Neck, the first textbook of head and neck surgery (1180 pages). Lane is remembered today by the Stanford School of Medicine’s Lane Library (initially founded from his extensive book collection) and the Lane Surgery Center (named in 2017) in which most OHNS surgery is conducted.
1870
Stanford’s predecessor school, the Cooper Medical College of the Pacific in San Francisco, was founded in 1870. By the late 19th century it had an eye, ear, nose, and throat clinic.
Amy Sullivan (L), cochlear implant patient, and research associate, Laurel Dent. July, 1984. Photo by Edward W. Souza, News & Publication Service, Stanford University.
— Photo courtesy of Lane Medical Library