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When it comes to exploring the vast field of laryngology, few events promise the depth and breadth of insight as the Cutting Edge Laryngology Conference—coming on 2-4 October 2024, showcasing the latest advances in our field.
In this special episode of the podcast, Natalie meets with Honorary Treasurer of the BLA, Chadwan Al Yaghchi, to discuss the programme and the topics they are looking forward to hearing about: from Idiopathic subglottic stenosis to vocal cord paralysis, laryngology to AI, Laryngeal dysfunction to dysphagia – Cutting Edge Laryngology has it covered!
This year, the conference will be held at the Royal Society of Medicine, London. There will be three keynote speakers: Marc Remacle, '30 years of laryngology, what did I learn?' Anais Rameau, 'AI, is it the future of laryngology?' and Nupur Nerurkar, 'Vocal fold cysts, sulci and mucosal bridges – The difficult family.'
At the conference, there will be six to seven free papers, oral presentations, and poster presentations. Each year, the best oral and poster presentation will be awarded the David Howard Prize. Abstract submissions are open until the 7th of June 2024.
Cutting Edge Laryngology is a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary meeting and will appeal to any health professionals with an interest in laryngology.
Contact Information
Visit www.britishlaryngological.org or download BLA Connect from your app store for further information and details on becoming a BLA member.
Register for Cutting Edge Laryngology 2024, 2-4 October 2024, at the Royal Society of Medicine London, here.
Email: enquiries@britishlaryngological.org for any questions or topic suggestions you may have for future episodes.
This show is brought to you by the BLA, you can follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Instagram hosted by Natalie Watson @surgeonsinger produced and directed by Heather Pownall of Heather's Media Hub Ltd.
The opinions of our host and guests are their own; The BLA does not endorse any individual viewpoints, given products or companies.
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Chadwan Al Yaghchi
It's possibly going to be our biggest programme to date in terms of faculties that we have, over 20 international speakers all the way from South Korea to California and everything in between. Collaboration is in the DNA of what we do in laryngology with our sub-specialties. You know our colleagues from respiratory and from gastroenterology, gastro physiologist, so we have all of these specialties represented in our meeting.
Natalie Watson
Welcome to BLA Connections: A Clear Voice. I'm your host Natalie Watson, and I'm delighted to bring you discussions and insights from experts from across the globe on all things laryngology. Today we talk to Mr. Chad Al Yaghchi, BLA treasurer, and laryngologist from Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust in London. You will be able to hear his previous podcast from series two, episode four, on the management of transgender voice. Thank you so much for joining us today, Chad.
Chadwan Al Yaghchi
Thank you very much, Natalie, for having me. And thank you for the kind introduction.
Natalie Watson
No worries. Well, today we're going to be talking about our plans for the three days of the Cutting Edge Conference, and this year it is being held at the Royal Society of Medicine in London on the 2nd, 3rd and 4th of October 2024. So what are the plans? What's the overall thought process around the Cutting Edge Conference this year?
Chadwan Al Yaghchi
As with always, this is the highlight of conferences in laryngology worldwide, if I may say so myself! And no, so in all seriousness, it's promising to be a fantastic conference. We will try to stick to the theme, as the name suggests, it’s cutting edge laryngology. So it will try to cover, What's the advances? What's happening in the world of laryngology? And that will be a mixture from advances in research but also advances in clinical practice to make it relevant to everyday practice. Rather than go into science and research specific.
Natalie Watson
It's a really nice balance between airway, voice, and swallow. as well as kind of aspects that would be interesting for speech language therapists as well, isn't it Chad?
Chadwan Al Yaghchi
Yes, we try to cover the full breadth of modern laryngology practice. So I tried to balance the programme to be ⅓ airway, ⅓ dysphagia, and ⅓ voice. And we also tried to accommodate the needs for both an ENT Consultant Laryngologist, ENT trainees with an interest in laryngology, and General ENT Surgeons, but more importantly, we cater for our Speech and Language Therapists. We try to include every session that will have representation from both surgeons and speech and language therapists, to do that partnership and collaboration and then we are so self reliant on each other.
Natalie Watson
Yeah, we are. So let's talk about the topics. Which topics do you anticipate to be the highlights? Or the ones to look out for?
Chadwan Al Yaghchi
This year is promising to be a fantastic programme. It's possibly going to be our biggest programme to date in terms of faculties that we have, over 20 international speakers all the way from South Korea, to California and everything in between.
So we have three fantastic keynote lectures. We have Mark Remacle from Belgium and Luxembourg who needs no introduction. Mark has been a pillar of laryngology worldwide and Europe in particular, for the last 30 years. So he's basically going to talk to us about what he has learned in 30 years of laryngology and share all of this wisdom and pearls with us and our delegates. The other two keynote speakers will be Anaïs Rameau, who is a consultant laryngologist from New York who has a fantastic interest in laryngology within dysphagia. And she was talking about dysphagia, but also she has a wide research interest. She has interest in technology, artificial intelligence, new technology startups. So she's a fantastic, dynamic, multifaceted person, which I thoroughly enjoy listening to, so her keynote will be on ‘AI, Is it the future of laryngology?’
Natalie Watson
And if you're interested in AI and laryngology, there is a podcast from last season on AI and laryngology. So do check that out too.
Chadwan Al Yaghchi
Yeah, there has been a lot of publication on AI both in voice in particular. So there is a lot of trying to diagnose voice conditions etc, but also in dysphagia. So you can record people, listen to how wet their speech voice is as an indicator of dysphagia issues.
So going back to our keynote speakers, the third is Dr. Nupur Nerurkar from Mumbai, India. So Nupur is a fantastic colleague, and she's one of the most skilled, talented surgeons you will ever see shining a CO2 laser. I watch her operate multiple times, but I've seen her operate live in workshops. And she's fantastic. It's like textbook surgery in the middle of a workshop. And you know what that looks like?
Natalie Watson
Yes. So live streaming is not the easiest.
Chadwan Al Yaghchi
No, it's not the easiest. From a room, when like 100 people are watching you trying to do bilateral intercordal cysts and getting them all both intact as a textbook picture. So Nupur will give a couple of talks, but her keynote will be on Scar Sulci. And she calls them the difficult family which is where you know they are the difficult family of diseases we all have to deal with.
Natalie Watson
I am so looking forward to that. That's going to be on the Friday, the 4th of October.
Chadwan Al Yaghchi
That will be on the Friday, yes. The other two new ventures we have this year, is we have over the last couple of years, we had fantastic collaboration going with the Union of European Phoneticians . We had our first joint meeting last year in September in London, which was a huge success, and we got fantastic feedback. So that will be on 25th of May in Zagreb. And we're continuing the theme of collaboration. We have a session hosted by the UEP this year. And that is going to be on acoustic voice assessment, which is not a subject we are particularly strong at in the UK, not in day to day practice. There is a lot of good research, but I don't think we really found the place for it in day to day practice in the UK. So the session I asked if they can be in is about acoustic, why it works, and does it change what I do. Yeah, so that's one collaboration.
The second collaboration is going to be our first with the American Laryngology Association, who will also host the session. And they're going to be talking on chronic cough and ILO (Inducible laryngeal obstruction).
Natalie Watson
That’s amazing. That's on the Thursday, the 3rd of October.
Chadwan Al Yaghchi
Yeah. Really looking forward to both sessions. In addition, we have our regular sessions. We have sessions on airway stenosis, we're looking into dysphagia, and we have our usual clinical case panel discussion, which we normally run every single day. We have one day on voice, one day on airway, and one day on dysphagia. These are normally huge crowd pleasers, and we try to make it as relevant and as clinical as we can.
Natalie Watson
And we're also inviting people to submit their abstracts as well?
Chadwan Al Yaghchi
Yes. We have a solid scientific programme normally. We have three sessions for free papers, where we can accommodate six to seven free paper oral presentations, which will anticipate poster presentations as well and there will be a prize for best oral and best poster presentations. So this is the David Howard prize which we award annually.
Natalie Watson
Brilliant. So lots of time to get those projects up and running and get the results in, so that we can judge those over the spring/summer. So how do people book on the conference? And will it be videoed and recorded and are people able to watch this after the event? Or is it a purely face to face event?
Chadwan Al Yaghchi
The conference is purely face to face, so people will need to be attending in person. However, we record all our sessions as with all BLA conferences and courses, we record the sessions, we will have the slides recorded from source, so it's good quality recording, and these will be available on the Talking Slide Website indefinitely, and that will be available for all BLA members, free of charge, and also for all conference delegates. So if you miss a session in the conference, you can always go back to listen to it, or if there is something in particular you enjoyed or a question, you remember that ‘oh that was mentioned at Cutting Edge’ - for forever you will have access to that material.
And then, speaking of which, for those who are BLA members or attended our previous conferences, and you are not aware of the Talking Slide Website, we have a fantastic library of conferences, courses, recorded lectures, all available. If you don't have access, please email Dion at enquiries@britishlaryngological.org and then she can send you your login details.
Natalie Watson
So, who should attend the BLA Cutting Edge Conference 2024?
Chadwan Al Yaghchi
Well, it's good to attend for every ENT person around, but definitely if you are a laryngologist, this will be the highlight of the academic year. I promise you that, you will not be disappointed. So everyone who is ENT with an interest in laryngology, people who have an interest in voice, and people who are a full time laryngologist, people from other sub specialties, our head and neck colleagues there will be something - we all manage these difficult cases, especially airway cases. We have seen a big increase in the last few years, and with big awareness, we're seeing a lot more of these patients. So there is a lot to learn there even if you are not a pure laryngologist. ENT trainees, so if you are interested in laryngology or even if you are not given laryngology a go so far, this will be a great introduction. Come and listen, see the breadth of the subspecialty that technology advances. You know, I am biassed and I'm sure you are biassed as well. But it is a genuinely fantastic specialty, there is something new coming every day. There is great technology around. If you are a tech savvy person you will love it. If you are an artistic person you will love it. If you haven't given laryngology a thought, and you're listening to this, please do consider and come and attend our conference.
And of course our speech and language therapy colleagues, there will be something in every session. And we have fantastic faculty members who are Speech and Language Therapists from the UK and from international who will share their experience with our delegates both ENT and speech and language therapists.
Natalie Watson
That’s brilliant. Really to emphasise, this really is an international affair. It's an international conference embracing all continents, and you can certainly see it with the UEP and American Laryngological Association. We are really working together as one laryngology family, to provide the latest and best evidence for everything that we do in laryngology.
The speakers, up to 20 speakers from international backgrounds. And we've got so much to learn from each other, a really multidisciplinary faculty. You've got the best speech language therapists, gastroenterologists, etc, who are all talking throughout the three days, so it's a fabulous conference to sign up to so don't delay booking on to the Cutting Edge Laryngology Conference at the Royal Society of Medicine in London on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th of October 2024. Any final thoughts or take-home messages from you Chad?
Chadwan Al Yaghchi
I think that's all. You’ve covered it really well Natalie. Collaboration is in the DNA of what we do in laryngology, with our sub specialties, you know, our colleagues from respiratory and from gastroenterology, gastro physiologists, so we have all of these specialties represented in our meeting and our international collaboration, and learning from each other. And then we will take that forward.
Natalie Watson
That's it. So collaboration, and it's the future. It's the Cutting Edge Laryngology. Hope to see you there. Thank you so much for joining us today Chad. We look forward to the next podcast together!
Chadwan Al Yaghchi
Thank you so much for having me. Thank you.
Natalie Watson
We hope you've enjoyed listening to BLA Connections: A Clear Voice. I've been your host Natalie Watson. Please do tune in this series for more laryngology topics. We would also love to hear from you. Please feel free to email with any topics you would like us to explore, any questions you have, along with any suggested experts you would like to hear from. Also, if you would like to contribute to these podcasts, please emailenquiries@britishlaryngological.org
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