Martin Burton

I am Director of the United Kingdom Cochrane Centre, the unit responsible for supporting the activities of Cochrane contributors in the UK and Ireland.  I am an Honorary Consultant Otolaryngologist at the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, based at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, and also Professor of Otolaryngology at the University of Oxford and Fellow in Clinical Medicine at Balliol College.  I was the founding co-ordinating editor of the Cochrane Ear, Nose & Throat Disorders Group and was Clinical Lead of the ENT & Audiology Library of the UK’s National Library for Health.  From 2014 to 2020 I served on the Governing Board of Cochrane, for the last three years as a Co-Chair of the Board.

I trained as a medical student at Cambridge and Oxford Universities and did my early clinical training in Oxford and Bristol.  I was a Fulbright Scholar and undertook research training at the Kresge Hearing Research Institute at the University of Michigan.   Following a period as Lecturer in Otolaryngology at the University of Melbourne, I completed my doctoral thesis on the safety of cochlear implantation in small children.  My higher surgical training was completed in London and as Fellow in Otology, Neurotology & Skull Base Surgery at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, USA.

My particular areas of interest are evidence based medicine (EBM), meta-analysis and systematic review, ear, nose and throat disorders in adults and children, especially ear disorders, including chronic middle ear and mastoid disease, cholesteatoma, deafness, tinnitus and vertigo.

My clinical practice is otology - particularly deafness, tinnitus and balance disorders.  I am interested in the application of evidence- (and wisdom-) based medicine in Otolaryngology and in otolaryngological epistemology and heuristics.