Otology · Vestibular medicine · Clinical research
Prof. dr.Wilko Grolman
Three decades of otology built on one habit: measure what the ear can actually do, under the conditions people actually live in.
Doctorate at the University of Amsterdam in 1998. Professor of otorhinolaryngology at UMC Utrecht from 2009 and head of its department of ENT–head and neck surgery; chair of the Division of Surgical Specialties from 2011 to 2016. Around 270 indexed outputs, more than ten thousand citations, six randomised trial programmes and over twenty completed doctorates. Today in full-time otological and vestibular practice at Clinique Causse in Colombiers, France.
Bibliometrics
Google Scholar profile, retrieved 22 August 2026.
The record, in numbers
Counts audited against PubMed, OpenAlex and Google Scholar on 17–22 August 2026. Where sources disagree — they index different things — both figures are shown rather than the flattering one.
Output and training
How the work was done
Span
Sources: PubMed exact-author search and OpenAlex, 17 August 2026; Google Scholar, 22 August 2026.
The work
Six randomised trial platforms and a laboratory programme, all pointed at the same question from different sides: what does an intervention on the ear actually buy the person who has to live with it?
n = 38
Bilateral cochlear implantation
A randomised comparison of one implant against two. Benefit appeared where it should — in spatial listening and speech in noise.
n = 113
CINGLE · single-sided deafness
Implantation against bone-conduction and sound-routing devices. Only the implant restored objective localisation, and it cut tinnitus hardest.
8% vs 42%
Earplugs at a real festival
The first randomised earplug trial run at an actual outdoor concert. Temporary threshold shift in 8% of protected ears against 42% unprotected.
n = 140
Day-case ear surgery
Two equivalence trials testing the same-day-discharge assumption for stapes surgery and cochlear implantation. Outcomes held; the promised savings did not.
A method with a bias in it
Test the thing in the conditions it will meet — a real festival, a real night at home, real spatial listening — and publish the answer even when it fails to flatter the intervention.
The portfolio has a recognisable shape. Systematic reviews come first and are used to expose where the evidence is thin; 49 of them are indexed. Trials are then designed to answer the exposed question, with economic evaluation and patient-reported outcomes attached rather than bolted on afterwards. Cohorts are followed long enough for the answer to change — two-year and five-year readouts are common.
Two of the six randomised programmes returned results that complicated the preferred narrative: day-case surgery did not deliver the expected cost saving, and the intratympanic gentamicin trial was stopped early. Both were published.
49
Evidence & method
Systematic reviews used to find the gap, economic evaluation written into the protocol, prognostic modelling, and the four results that did not flatter the intervention.
2006–
Technology & engineering
Technical manager of Telemedicine ENT Studio, across three strands: technical (live surgical broadcasting and instrumentation), design (information architecture and build), and network (routing, firewalls, protocol interoperability).
Where the evidence went
Trial results that left the journal and turned into guidance.
WHO safe listening
The festival earplug trial contributed to the evidence behind the WHO Global Standard for Safe Listening Venues and Events.
ITU guidance, 2024
The same body of work is reflected in ITU safe-listening guidance and in American Academy of Otolaryngology patient resources.
Dutch reimbursement
The bilateral implantation trials informed Dutch Health Care Insurance Board reports on paediatric bilateral cochlear implant reimbursement.
A school, not just a laboratory
More than twenty doctorates were completed under his supervision between 2010 and 2019, across cochlear implantation, auditory-nerve physiology, otosclerosis mechanics, vestibular diagnostics, 7 Tesla imaging, tinnitus, evidence-based medicine and health-care organisation. Several of those trials are still reporting: the single-sided-deafness randomised trial published its speech-in-noise outcomes in 2025, and the day-case cost analyses landed in 2024 and 2025 — years after the Utrecht chair ended.
Now
Full-time otological and vestibular practice at the Centre de Vertige, Clinique Causse, Colombiers — a practice restricted to the ear: hearing, vertigo, tinnitus and the Eustachian tube, with vestibular testing on site. Patient information lives on the clinic site; this page is the academic record.