Q and A with Michael Hoffer, M.D.
The Miller School hearing loss and traumatic brain injury expert continues his service work in prestigious, elected roles.
He gained national attention for his NFL-funded research on mild traumatic brain injury and his first-line diagnosis of American diplomats to Cuba with a mysterious inner-ear injury, “Havana syndrome.”
Despite these brushes with fame, Michael Hoffer, M.D. never loses sight of the true scope of his work on treating hearing loss and balance disorders.
“We’re not obligated to only care for people in Miami. We’re obligated to take care of people worldwide,” he said.
A professor of otolaryngology and neurological surgery at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Dr. Hoffer teaches and trains medical students and residents while maintaining a thriving clinical practice and two research labs.
In May, Dr. Hoffer assumed the presidency of The Triological Society. He was also recently elected to a six-year term on the otolaryngology residency review committee for the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), a first for the Miller School.
A 20-year military career likely oriented Dr. Hoffer toward service. Before he retired as a Navy captain, Dr. Hoffer served two tours of duty in Iraq, treated active-duty service members and retirees, trained residents and conducted research on balance and hearing disorders.
Dr. Hoffer talks more about his background, his current research and what he plans to do in his elected professional roles in the following interview, lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
What led you to want to study ears?
I had ear disease when I was a child. But more than that, I was just fascinated with the functioning of hearing and particularly the balance system, which is right next to the ear. And so, in my first year of medical school, I was like, ‘What specialty does that?’ Who has heard of otolaryngology, right?
I also wanted to be in a specialty that could do medical treatments as well as the surgical treatments, which is a good balance, I think.
Can you talk about what led you to your career in the military? And how has your military work informed your career path and research interests?
My Navy career was somewhat unusual in that I didn’t have any medical school or training paid for by the military. But we have a very rich military tradition in my family. When I was in the middle of my fellowship in neurotology looking for a job, I started talking to the Navy, who needed ear specialists. They told me that not only would I be able to see patients, but they’d fund some research. Plus, I’d be in San Diego, which is where I went to medical school. I stayed because I loved what I was doing, I loved where I worked and I loved the patients I was working on.
When I was in the Navy, my lab focused on traumatic damage to the ear and that morphed into traumatic damage to the ear and brain. We started seeing a tremendous number of individuals after blast explosions who had hearing and balance disorders.
And I still do that work in a variety of ways here in Miami, both in the basic science lab and in my clinical lab. Our clinical lab is basically an engineering lab where we’re building devices and testing them out, using humans as the subjects.
Give me an overview of your current projects. Which are you most interested in?
I have a big clinical lab, about six or seven people. During the pandemic, we couldn’t do our usual research, so we teamed up with immunologists and did some work on COVID. So, strangely enough, even though we’re much more accomplished in ear damage, ear surgery and ear trauma, my most significant, impactful articles lately have been on COVID.
But now we’re back to doing our core work. If you look at the seven or eight projects we have going on right now, they’re all somewhere in that: from the animal models, where we’re looking at medicines for trauma, all the way to human testing, human prognosis and human treatment. And then we can’t ignore things like artificial intelligence and machine learning as ways of looking at some of the hundreds of pieces of data we collect on every patient and seeing if it can inform us in a more intelligent way.
We’re doing engineering to modify or develop new tests of balance function and brain function. For instance, right now there are five or six vestibular tests on the market. We’ve taken one of those vestibular tests and modified it to be more specific and to give more information in a quicker fashion.
Nowadays I’d have to wait two months to get someone in for a four-hour balance test. But hopefully in the future I can change that to a 15-minute test, which will be more accessible and affordable.
Can you talk a bit more about what initiatives and programs you plan to work on in your time as president of The Triological Society?
Well, first it’s worth noting that I’ve been on the council that helps direct The Triological Society for 12 years before I was elected president. So what you do in your one year as president is a culmination of what you’ve been working on all along.
We’ve been doing a lot of work on diversity, equity and inclusion in our membership. I’ll be focusing on revitalizing our private practitioner membership, which has been dwindling, and to make sure we do it so that the membership reflects the patients we treat.
But maybe more significant than The Triological Society is my work on the ACGME Residency Review Committee, a very small group of 12 people that helps oversee all the ENT residencies across the country. It’s something my dad did for orthopedics and I really wanted to do it for otolaryngology.
We do things as simple as approving a new program to come on board to as complicated as disbanding a program and everything in between. We also have new policies coming out from our board that we need to make sure residencies include in their code of conduct.
What do you do in your spare time?
Well, my wife would tell you, ‘Nothing.’ Ha ha. I work out every day. Maybe not like I used to when I was in the military 20 years ago, but I still go hard every morning. Otherwise, I mostly watch sports and hang out with my family.
My wife Debbie and I have been married for 36 years and we have two kids, a 32-year old son Kyle and my 28-year-old daughter, Ali. I couldn’t do any of this—even the clinical stuff, let alone all the research—without their tremendous support. They are the real heroes in this whole story.
Tags: Dr. Michael Hoffer, Havana Syndrome, head and neck surgery, hearing loss, otolaryngology, The Triological Society