Establishing a Center of Excellence

In 2021, the USF Health Voice Center was founded with the recruitment of Dr. Yael Bensoussan MD and Stephani Watts, PhD CCC-SLP. In just more of a year this unique team has grown to include two dedicated fellowship trained Laryngologists and three spech language pathologists. As the first center of its kind on the west coast of Florida the USF division of laryngology focuses on the diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation of patients with effectively any voice or swallowing disorders. 

Our multidisciplinary approach is unique as it provides dual assesment with a subspecialized laryngologist and speech langual pathologist. Both providers examine and evaluate each patient together from each of their points of view to come up with a comprehensive treatment plan. The examination includes a full head and neck exam including a stroboscopic exam as well as voice evaluation and analysis. Treatment can include medical, surgical, behavioral, or a combination. This model allows for efficient and comprehensive patient care as the two specialists can collaborate and share their expertise. It also steamlines the patient experience limiting the number of visits and travel time to the clinic. 

The USF Health Voice Center also offers many in-office procedures which allows for efficient care for patients as well as eliminating the risk of undergoing anesthesia. Awake procedures performed include vocal fold injection augmentation, nasopharyngeal injection augmentation, superior laryngeal nerve blocks, laryngeal botox injections, laryngeal steroid injections, steroid injections of subglottic stenosis, trans-nasal esophagoscopy, bronchoscopy, awake esophageal balloon dilations, and laryngeal laser procedures. 

Yaël Bensoussan, MD MSc, FRCSC

Assistant Professor

Chief, Division of Laryngology

Director, USF Health Voice Center

Yassmeen Abdel-Aty, MD

Assistant Professor

Division of Laryngology

Stephanie Watts,

Ph.D., CCC-SLP

Swallow Specialized Speech Language Pathologist,

Assistant Professor,

Section Chief Speech Language Pathology 

Megan Urbano,

CCC-SLP

Voice Specialized Speech Language Pathologist 

Jennifer Larsson,

CCC-SLP

Head and Neck Cancer Specialized Speech

Language Pathologist 

Dr. Yael Bensoussan, Division Chief of Laryngology, Director of USF Health Voice Center, is now wearing a new hat. Receiving a multimillion-dollar grant from the NIH,

Dr. Bensoussan from USF and co-principal investigator Dr. Elemento from Cornell, have made USF the lead institution in a project involving over 10 institutions. 

The project, called “Voice as a Biomarker of Health,” is using artificial intelligence and machine learning to connect changes in the human voice with disease. This has the potential of picking up diseases earlier than they would be otherwise. This project aims to ethically collect and bank human voices in a large and secure database that can then be used to trained machine learning models to spot diseases. 

The USF Health department of Otolaryngology Head & Neck Surgery had a successful showing at this year’s Florida Combined Otolaryngology Meeting held in Boca Raton Florida this November. Two of our faculty members, Dr. Julia Toman and Matthew Mifsud, were integral members of the planning committee for this highly anticipated multidisciplinary meeting.

Our faculty were heavily involved in the educational curriculum providing lectures and leading panels on a variety of key topics ranging from our experience with nerve stimulation for obstructive sleep apnea, to the cutting-edge management of chronic rhinosinusitis. 

The meeting highlight was the second annual Florida Resident Trivia Bowl. Our team led by Drs. Cheyenne Roohani and Steven Aziz defeneded last years title and once again claimed victory for USF Health. We look forward to defending the title once again at next year’s meeting!

Welcome Our New Trainees - USF Health Otolaryngology Residency Class of 2027

Dr. Stefanie Miller     

University of Central Florida College of Medicine

Dr. Samer Elsamna        

Rutgers New Jersey

Medical School

Dr. Andrew DeAtkine 

University of Alabama School of Medicine

Dr. Michael Randall

University of South Florida

Dr. Yassmeen Abdel-Aty

Dr. Abdel-Aty completed a fellowship in Laryngology at a joint Columbia and

Cornell program. 

Dr. Abhay Sharma

Dr. Sharma (right) completed a fellowship in Sleep Surgery at University

of Wisconsin. 

An Expanding Focus on Clinical Research

Victoria Sanchez AuD, PhD,

CCC-A/F-AAA

Resident Research Director

Grant Funding

• Abdel-Aty- Endowment for Education Research Award to create modules to teach residents interpretation of videostroboscopy
• Arnold/Sanchez - NIH NIDCD Early Career Research Award: "Development and Assessment of a Spanish-Language Toolkit for Hearing Loss Self-Management"
• Bensoussan- Bridge2AI NIH- “Voice as a biomarker of health”

• Sanchez/Lin- RO1 NIH/NIDCD “Randomized Trial of Telehealth vs Conventional Hearing Care Delivery in the ACHIEVE Study”
• Sanchez/Boyev/Arnold/Szeto - Helen of Troy Clinical Validation Study of the BHAI00 Sereis Braun Clear TM
• Sanchez-“Reactivating Innate Repair Pathways in Neurodegenerative Diseases: Protocol Development”
• Sanchez-“Development of Objective Auditory Measurements for Future Clinical Trial Applications”
• Sanchez-“Supporting Hearing Loss Pharmaceutical Translation”
• Sanchez-“A Phase 2, Prospective, Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled, Single-Dose, Multicenter Study to Evaluate the Efficacy of FX-322 Administered by Intratympanic Injection in Adults with Acquired Sensorineural Hearing Loss”
• Sanchez/Boyev-“A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled phase 1/2 study of OTO-413 given as a single intratympanic injection in subjects with speech-in-noise hearing impairment”
• Tabor - Age related Differences in Chronic Rhinosinusitis (CRS) and Nasal polyps
• Tabor - Studies of human airway disease and repository for biologic samples 
• Tabor/Toman/Sanchez-“The Vivaer® Procedure for Treatment of Nasal Airway Obstruction – A ProspecTive, Multicenter Randomized Controlled TriAl Comparing Vivaer to Sham Control (VATRAC)”
• Toman/Sanchez- "Hearing Health Awareness among Black Women: A Multi-method Analysis”

Recent Publications

As part of this region's leading academic medical center, our physicians and providers share their expertise by authoring numerous publications. To view our recent articles, please click on the link below.

Faculty

Tapan A. Padhya, MD

Professor and Chair

Director, Division of Head and Neck Oncology

Co- director, USF ENT Sleep and Snoring Center

K. Paul Boyev, MD

Associate Professor and Director,

Division of Otology / NeurotologyLateral Skull Base Surgery, Cochlear Implants, Bone anchored hearing aids

Thomas V. McCaffrey, MD, PHD

Professor

Head & Neck Oncology, Thyroid Cancer, Airway Surgery

Mark Tabor, MD

Associate Professor

Director, Sinus & Endoscopic Skull Base Surgery

Matthew Mifsud, MD

Assistant Professor

Head & Neck Oncology, Microvascular Reconstructive Surgery,

Director, Center for Salivary Surgery

Arjun Parasher, MD

Assistant Professor

Rhinology, Nasal and Sinus Surgery, Endoscopic Skull Base Surgery

Julia Toman, MD

Assistant Professor

Division Facial Plastics and Reconstructive Surgery

Mark Witte, MD

Assistant Professor

General Otolaryngology/Otology

Abhay Sharma, MD 

Assistant Professor 

Director, Division of Interventional

Sleep Surgery

Co-Director, USF ENT Sleep and

Snoring Center

Lindsey Ryan, MD

Assistant Professor

Rhinology, Nasal and Sinus Surgery, Endoscopic Skull Base Surgery

Christopher Nickel, MD

Assistant Professor

Head & Neck Oncology, Microvascular Reconstructive Surgery

Yael Bensoussan, MD

Assistant Professor

Laryngology,

Director, USF Health Voice Center

Yassmeen Abdel-Aty, MD 

Assistant Professor 

Laryngology, USF Health Voice Center 

Victoria Sanchez, AuD, PhD,

CCC-A/F-AAA

Assistant Professor

Audiologist USF Hearing & Balance Center

Tammy Szeto, PhD, CCC-A

Director, USF Hearing and Balance Center

Speech Language Pathologists

Stephanie Watts, PhD CCC-SLP 

Assistant Professor 

Laryngology, USF Health Voice Center

Megan Urbano, CCC-SLP 

Laryngology, USF Health Voice Center

Jennifer Larsson, CCC-SLP 

Division of Head and Neck Oncology 

Laryngology, USF Health Voice Center

Advanced Practice Providers

Hoc Dang, PA

Physicians Assistant

Kayley Wagner, ARNP

Nurse Practitioner

J. Kinneret Ron, MS, FNP-C APRN

Nurse Practitioner

Refer to USF Health Otolaryngology -

Head & Neck Surgery

Appointments 813-821-8012

Fax 813-974-7314

Email Otolaryngology@usf.edu

North Tampa Location

USF Health Morsani Center for Advanced Healthcare &

TGH Surgery Center at Morsani

13330 USF Laurel Drive

Tampa, Florida 33612

South Tampa Location

USF Health South Tampa Center for Advanced Healthcare

2 Tampa General Circle

Tampa, Florida 33606