June 2023

ENT

NANCY M. YOUNG, MD GIVES THE 2023 HOWARD P. HOUSE, MD MEMORIAL LECTURE FOR ADVANCES IN OTOLOGY

Featuring:  Nancy M. Young, MD​
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About the Howard P. House, MD Memorial Lecture for Advances in Otology​

Howard P. House, MD’s passion for sharing knowledge through research and education is the reason we honor him through the establishment of a lectureship and to ensure that Dr. House’s desire to share knowledge on a global plane continues.

​2023 Lecturer

Precision Medicine to Improve Outcome: Neurocognitive Machine Learning Enabled Language Prediction for Children with Hearing Loss
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Presented during the Annual Meeting on Tuesday, October 3, 2:15 – 3:15 pm (CT).

Nancy M. Young, MD, is the Lillian S. Wells Professor of Pediatric Otolaryngology at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. She is head of the Section of Otology and Neurotology in the Division of Otolaryngology, and Medical Director of Department of Audiology and Cochlear Implant Program at the Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. She is a fellow of the Northwestern University Knowles Hearing Center and a member of the Institute for Innovations in Developmental Sciences.

Pediatric cochlear implantation is Dr. Young’s primary academic focus. She is currently engaged in research to forecast language after implantation based on brain structure and function. Accurate prediction is a first step needed to develop custom language learning training paradigms. The long-term goal of this research, which was awarded R01 grant funding from the National Institutes of Health/National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, is development of personalized training to address the language gap between implanted and typical hearing children. The multicenter study uses pre-surgical brain imaging and AI-enabled analytical methods to predict individual-level language outcomes after cochlear implantation. She is also lead investigator of a Food and Drug Administration clinical trial to expand pediatric cochlear implant indications.

Dr. Young founded the Lurie Children’s Pediatric Cochlear Implant Program, one of the largest of its kind in the United States. She is a fellow of the American Otological Society Council, currently serving as education director. She is a founding board member of the American Cochlear Implant Alliance. In 2021, Dr. Young was awarded the Helen F. Krause, MD Trailblazer award by the AAO-HNS Women in Otolaryngology Section. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Hearing Health Foundation, the largest nonprofit funder of hearing and balance research based in the U.S.

About the Lecture

Cochlear implantation has transformed the lives of individuals with hearing loss and their families, and scientific understanding of neuroplasticity. Despite its effectiveness, the language of implanted children as a group falls well below typical hearing children.

Learning Objectives:
  1. Explain why age at implant and residual hearing alone do not accurately predict language on the individual child level.
  2. Understand that prediction of language outcome is possible using predictive analytics with artificial intelligence.
  3. Explain the importance of top-down and bottom-up cortical process in development of speech perception.

Previous Lecturers:
  • 2021: Lloyd B. Minor, MD
  • 2019: Andrea Vambutas, MD
  • 2017: Herbert Silverstein, MD, FACS
  • 2015: Konstantina M. Stankovic, MD, PhD
  • 2013: Derald E. Brackmann, MD
  • 2011: Professor Vittorio Colletti
  • 2010: Rodney C. Perkins, MD
  • 2009: Michael E. Glasscock III, MD
  • 2008: John W. House, MD, on behalf of William F. House, DDS, MD

This article was originally published in the AMERICAN ACADEMY OF OTOLARYNGOLOGY​on January 31, 2023. 
​Nancy M. Young, MD

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