WG Wilko Grolman
ENFRIT

Research

Eight programmes, one question

What does an intervention on the ear actually buy the person who has to live with it?

Six randomised trial platforms and two laboratory programmes, run mostly out of UMC Utrecht between 2009 and 2018 and still reporting. Each began the same way: a systematic review to find out how thin the evidence really was, then a trial designed to answer the exposed question in a realistic setting.

Research programmes

01

randomised trial

Bilateral cochlear implantation

Adults were randomised to one implant or two, then tested in conditions that separate the sound sources rather than pushing everything through a single loudspeaker. Binaural benefit showed up exactly where the physics says it should: speech in noise and sound localisation. A two-year follow-up confirmed the benefit was stable, and a later multicentre trial found no difference between simultaneous and sequential implantation.

Design
Randomised, multicentre
Analysed
38 adults
Reported
2016, 2017, 2019

02

randomised trial

CINGLE — single-sided deafness

A cochlear implant compared against a bone-conduction device and a contralateral routing-of-sound hearing aid, with an economic evaluation built in from the protocol. The implant was the only option that restored objective sound localisation, and it produced the largest reduction in tinnitus. Speech-in-noise outcomes were published in 2025.

Design
Randomised + national multicentre
Treated
113 patients
Reported
2015 – 2025

03

randomised trial

Hearing protection at a live festival

Rather than a sound booth, the trial ran at an actual outdoor music festival: volunteers randomised to earplugs or none, audiometry before and after. Temporary threshold shift occurred in 8% of protected ears against 42% of unprotected ears. A systematic review published alongside it set out how thin the prior evidence had been.

Design
Randomised, field setting
Participants
51
Uptake
WHO · ITU · AAO-HNS

04

two randomised equivalence trials

Day-case ear surgery

Same-day discharge is widely assumed to be cheaper and just as good. Two randomised equivalence trials — one in stapes surgery, one in cochlear implantation — tested that directly. Hearing results, quality of life and complications were comparable; the cost sub-analyses did not find the promised total saving, and crossover to admission was substantial.

Design
Randomised, equivalence
Randomised
112 + 28
Reported
2022, 2024, 2025

05

laboratory programme

Stapes laser physics

An experimental programme measuring what surgical lasers actually do inside the middle ear: thermal, mechanical and acoustic effects, measured rather than assumed. After clinical complications with a thulium laser, the group advised against that technology — a recommendation that came from its own measurements.

Method
Temporal bone & measurement
Focus
1,470 nm diode, thulium
Reported
2013 – 2017

06

imaging feasibility

7 Tesla inner-ear imaging

Ex-vivo and in-vivo imaging at 7 Tesla to see whether the fine structures of the cochlea could be depicted in a living patient. The honest finding: technically possible, with artefacts that have not gone away. Diffusion tensor imaging of the auditory nerve in long-term single-sided deafness came out of the same programme.

Method
7T MRI, ex vivo + in vivo
Finding
Feasible, artefact-limited
Reported
2014, 2015

07

preclinical

Auditory-nerve preservation

Preclinical work asking whether the auditory nerve can be protected after deafness. Temporary neurotrophin treatment preserved spiral ganglion cells and kept electrically evoked responses intact — published in the Journal of Neuroscience. The related inter-phase-gap biomarker work is credited below.

Method
Animal model, eCAP
Result
Cells and function preserved
Reported
2014, 2015

08

clinical measurement

Vestibular science & canal dehiscence

Superior canal dehiscence studied by combining imaging, audiometry, vestibular-evoked myogenic potentials and follow-up, with the specific aim of telling an anatomical finding apart from a symptomatic patient — including how dehiscence size and location change intracochlear sound pressure, and a description of familial cases.

Method
Imaging + cVEMP + audiometry
Question
Finding vs. syndrome
Reported
2014 – 2016
09

What is not claimed

Two explicit exceptions

Senior authorship is not the same as originating an idea, and this record distinguishes the two.

Inter-phase-gap and eCAP auditory-nerve biomarkers. The programme is credited to its originators; the contribution here was senior and supervisory.

Intratympanic gentamicin for Ménière’s disease. A collaborating author, not the originator of the concept. The trial was stopped early — 15 patients of the 48 planned — and that is reported as such.

Median authorship across the portfolio is five; there are no solo-authored papers. Almost everything here belongs to a doctoral candidate or a multicentre group as much as to the supervisor.