ENT - Key Persons
D. Balakrishnan is an ENT surgeon with three decades of experience in ENT. His special interests are Paediatric ENT, Sleep studies and Snoring. He was born on 16.1.1952. He obtained a BSc degree from Annamalai University in 1971, with University First rank. His entire medical education was done in Madras Medical College. He obtained MS ENT in 1981. His PhD thesis was on snoring and obstructive sleep apnoea in children.
As a Senior Research Fellow with ICMR, in 1978-80, he had done a study on the prevalence and aetiology of hearing impairment in rural and urban areas. It was a pioneering collaborative survey carried out in four different centres - Delhi, Calcutta, Chennai and Trivandrum. He had been a Visiting fellow in Paediatric Otolaryngology at the Erasmus University and Sophia Kinderzeikenhuis, Rotterdam, The Netherlands Sep-Oct 1998. He had been an invited delegate to the 5th International Congress and Academic Conference on Allergy and Immunology in Otolaryngology in 1998 in the University of Siena, Italy. He was a teaching faculty for the 2nd SAARC international conference 2000 in Kathmandu.
After his postgraduate degree in ENT, he served the government of Tamilnadu as an ENT surgeon and a medical teacher in various medical colleges in Tamilnadu. He retired from government service in 2010 as the Professor of Paediatric Otolaryngology, Institute of Child Health & Hospital for Children, Madras Medical College. He did a brief stint in Pondicherry institute of Medical Sciences as professor and HOD of ENT. Later, he was the Professor of ENT and Head of the department of Audiology and Speech Language Pathology, in the SRM University Medical College, SRM Insitute of Science and Technology (SRM University) from 2010 to April 2021. During this period, he served as the Dean of Medical Research, in the same institution from 2010 to 2015. In addition, he is a Honorary Visiting professor in the National Institute for Empowerment of Persons with Multiple Disabilities (NIEPMD) Chennai.
He has authored several research papers. As an undergraduate student in Madras Medical College in 1973, he received the Chief Minister's award for his paper on Inflammation in Tamil. Again in 1974, he received the same award for a paper on Oedema. In 1994, he received a gold medal from the Prof P. Narasimha Rao, President of the Medical Council of India for the best research paper. He has written two books (1) Clinical ENT Made Easy, for the graduate students, being published by a private publisher and (2) A booklet in Tamil, on Malignancies in the Head and Neck, for the benefit of patients suspected to have head and neck malignancies, funded by the Tamilnadu Dr MGR Medical University in 2002. He has an innate ability to render medical information in an eminently simple prose.
When he was an assistant professor in the Institute of Child Health & Hospital for Children, in 1994, he had the privilege of founding the Association of Paediatric Otolaryngologists of India (APOI). He was the organizing secretary of the Second National conference of APOI in 1995 in Madras. He had piloted the scientific sessions of twelve national conferences of APOI and had edited the proceedings, funded by the Medical council of India. He is now the National Secretary of this association. For eight years, he was the Hon. Secretary of the Chennai Central branch of IMA.
He has an abiding interest in community development. He has organized several community lectures, in popular media. He has taken part in nearly one hundred outreach ENT camps in various parts of the state. He had been the organizer and leader of twenty such camps. Four of these camps were full-fledged surgical camps. In 1998, on the invitation of the Hon. Minister of Social Welfare of the Government of Srilanka, he conducted an ENT surgical camp in 1998 in Nuvera Eliya region of that country.
One of his current projects is called Mission H.E.A.R. Primarily based in the Kanchi Kamakoti Childs Trust Hospital, Chennai, it aims to be a one stop solution for hearing impairment at all ages, right from the day of birth to a ripe age. He also does consultancy for industrial noise conservation programmes.
His wife is a Forensic scientist. She is at present, employed as the Assistant director of forensic sciences. She has a special interest in teaching, and trains the Tamilnadu police personnel in scientific methods of investigations for the All India Police Duty meets. He is blessed with two sons. The elder studies electrical engineering in the National University of Singapore. The younger is studying medicine.