Sujana S. Chandrasekhar, MD, FACS, FAAO-HNS

Dr. Sujana Chandrasekhar is the current President of the 12,000 member American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery (www.entnet.org). She was elected by the membership in August 2014. She is the third woman and the first person of Indian descent to hold that office. She previously served as Chair of the AAO-HNS Board of Governors.

She is currently Director of New York Otology, Director of Neurotology at the James J. Peters Veterans Administration Medical Center, Otologist/Neurotologist at the New York Head and Neck Institute, and voluntary faculty at Mount Sinai. As such, she is at the clinical forefront in management of disorders of hearing, balance, tinnitus, facial nerve, and lateral skull base, as well as cochlear and Baha implants. She is the medical director of the Vestibular Disorders Evaluation Clinic at the Bronx VA Hospital, a multidisciplinary team to rapidly and thoroughly assess and treat patients, especially those returning from active duty, with complex dizziness disorders.

Dr. Chandrasekhar’s career interests include hearing loss, tinnitus, vertigo, skull base tumors and temporal bone histopathology. Since 1990, she has published several papers in otology and otolaryngology. She published a landmark paper on sudden hearing loss, and was vice-chair of the Academy Guidelines on sudden hearing loss. She is now a Consultant on the AAO-HNSF Guidelines Development Taskforce. Her research on intranasal surfactant for otitis media and Eustachian tube dysfunction is ground-breaking. She has built on that research to develop a company to commercialize the use of intranasal surfactant for OM and ETD. She has also written on, and is funded for, gender research in otolaryngology. Dr. Chandrasekhar was honored with the AAO-HNS’s Distinguished Service Award in September 2006 and 2012. She is Immediate Past Chair of the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery Board of Governors. Her other main interest is in humanitarian outreach. She has led five groups of practitioners on medical/surgical missions to Nicaragua, and has delivered lectures and performed surgeries on several occasions in India, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, and Venezuela.

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Dr. Chandrasekhar completed her residency in Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at New York University Medical Center in New York. She then completed her fellowship in Otology and Neuro-otology at the House Ear Clinic and Institute in Los Angeles, California. She served on the full-time academic faculty of both UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School and Mount Sinai School of Medicine before entering private practice in New York City in October 2004.