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Department of Otolaryngology Department of Otolaryngology
  1. Department of Otolaryngology
  2. Education & Training
  3. International Speaker Series
  4. Parapharyngeal Tumors

Parapharyngeal Tumors

James L. Netterville, MD
The Mark C. Smith Professor of Head and Neck Oncology
Director, Head and Neck Oncologic Services
Executive Vice Chair, Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery
Associate Director, Bill Wilkerson Center for Otolaryngology and Communication Sciences
Service Chief, Head and Neck Surgical Oncology
Member, Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health

A co-founder of Vanderbilt's Department of Otolaryngology, James L. Netterville, M.D. is also its Executive Vice Chair and Director of Head and Neck Oncologic Services, as well as the Associate Director of the Bill Wilkerson Center for Otolaryngology and Communication Sciences. As the Mark C. Smith Professor of Otolaryngology, he promotes education and research in skull base, voice disorders and all aspects of head and neck oncologic surgery.

His publications have been cited over three thousand times worldwide and are widely considered seminal work in the treatment of skull base tumors and their functional outcomes. He wrote a paper on the rehabilitation of cranial nerve deficits after skull base surgery in 1993 which changed the paradigm of treatment for elderly and infirm patients. He subsequently wrote chapters on this treatment in Otologic Surgery and in Surgery of the Ear. In addition, he is one of the world's foremost authorities on the etiology and management of carotid body tumors. He pioneered the widespread use of an intracapsular dissection method for carotid body tumors and vagal schwannomas that retains the neural connectors and receptors needed for blood pressure maintenance.

Dr. Netterville has been actively involved in improving the healthcare infrastructure in low-resource countries since 1999, leading and participating in surgical educational camps in Haiti, Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda. He is a Past-President of the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery. He has received many honors and awards in his career, including the deRoaldes Award and two Presidential Citations from the American Laryngological Association.