ENT or Head and Neck

[DadiyaMD]

What's the difference? A person with GS residency can do Head/Neck fellowship, right? Can they practice as a ENT? I guess I just dont understand the difference?

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[doc05]

ENT training includes a very substantial head and neck experience, but includes much more. the field is really otolaryngology-head and neck surgery. the great majority of GS residencies offer minimal head/neck exposure, and what they do does not include the more complex cases that the ENT service does.

while GS trained surgeons technically CAN enter head/neck fellowship, this doesn't really happen anymore. from what I've heard, noone entering head/neck fellowship has been GS-trained in several years. So if you want to do head and neck, do an ENT residency. If you want to concentrate on bowels, go for GS.

 

[GreatSaphenous]

Don't want to cloud the issue, since I'm not a hundred percent sure what types of procedures you wish to be able to perform. However in my time on plastics, we shared the craniofacial reconstruction cases with ENT alternating weeks. Plus there was a fellowship available for those who wanted more intensive experience in that area. So there are a lot of procedures to learn in that area, but you would not be qualified to work on the middle ear of larynx or anything.



I am the Great Saphenous!

 

[neutropeniaboy]

while GS trained surgeons technically CAN enter head/neck fellowship, this doesn't really happen anymore. from what I've heard, noone entering head/neck fellowship has been GS-trained in several years. So if you want to do head and neck, do an ENT residency. If you want to concentrate on bowels, go for GS.

I think MSK has an oncology fellowship that includes head and neck training, but I don't know how extensively they focus on that sort of thing.

Head and neck oncology isn't exclusively the domain of the otolaryngologist; there are many oral and maxillofacial surgeons who do head and neck oncology -- especially mouth cancers. There's a "head and neck" oncology fellowship at our institution for OMFS guys.

GSs who do H&N oncology really don't have the training to do any of the otology, laryngology, or sinus surgeries proficiently, so I would venture a guess that most GSs who do H&N don't do other ENT stuff.

 

[Blade28]

G Surg usually stops at thyroid surg or neck dissections, no?

 

[neutropeniaboy]

G Surg usually stops at thyroid surg or neck dissections, no?

Well, a lot of endocrine surgeons will do thyroids and parathyroids. I don't know any who know how to do neck dissections. At our institution, if a patient gets a thyroid done by a GS and needs a neck dissection, we usually do the neck dissection.

I'm sure there are many GSs who do neck abscesses, excisional biopsies, tracheotomies, and endocrine...

 

[TheThroat]

The official name of the field of "ENT" is Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery. That said, actually the number of people that go into "Head and Neck Oncology" is pretty low. A number of fellowship postitions last year went unfilled. The reason for this is mainly financial: the field is not as lucrative as otology, facial-plastics, or rhinology. G-Surg's exposure, at Iowa at least, to the "head and neck" is limited to thyroid/parathyroid, trachs, and lymph node bx's.