Itzhak Brook to Give Medical Ethics Lecture at American Academy of Otolaryngology Meeting

Posted in GUMC Stories

Itzhak Brook, M.D., M.Sc., will deliver the John Conley, M.D. Lecture on Medical Ethics at the opening ceremony of the 2012 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery Foundation on September 9. The meeting is the largest gathering of ear, nose, and throat physicians in the world.

The John Conley, M.D. Lecture on Medical Ethics is named for an esteemed leader in otolaryngology and is based on Conley’s passion for head and neck surgery and belief in the professionalism of the practice of medicine. Conley was a past president of the American Academy of Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery.

With his talk titled “A Physician’s Perspective as a Throat Cancer Patient,” Brook hopes “physicians, nurses, and other health care professionals may be more aware of what their patients actually experience, and patients who face similar hardships may find out how to cope with them.”

Brook was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2006. Two years later, he had his larynx removed and currently speaks with a tracheoesophageal prosthesis. He is the author of the book, My Voice, a Physician’s Personal Experience with Throat Cancer. The book offers a personal look at a doctor who becomes a patient.

“I felt for the first time the effects of severe illness through the eyes of a patient and observed and experienced events I was never aware happened to them,” he wrote in the introduction.

Later this month on September 22, Brook will be a featured speaker at the Fifth Annual David Nasto Memorial Walk for Oral Cancer Awareness Andover, N.J., where he will share his story with advocates in the fight against oral cancer.

Brook is an adjunct professor of pediatrics at Georgetown University. He earned his medical degree and completed his residency at Hebrew University, Hadassah School of Medicine in Jerusalem, Israel and obtained his master’s degree in pediatrics from the University of Tel Aviv in Israel.

He has conducted extensive research on anaerobic and respiratory tract infections, anthrax, and infections following exposure to ionizing radiation. He is the author of six medical textbooks, 108 book chapters and more than 700 scientific publications.