Professor Valerie Lund awarded DBE for services to rhinology

11 January 2024

ENT UK is delighted to congratulate Professor Dame Valerie Lund DBE FRCS, and ENT UK Past President, on being awarded Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the King's New Year’s Honours list, 2024 in recognition of her services to rhinology. 

Valerie Lund is Professor Emeritus of Rhinology at the Ear Institute, University College London and is an Honorary Consultant ENT Surgeon at the Royal National Ear, Nose, Throat and Eastman Dental Hospital (University College London Hospital NHS Trust), University College Hospital. She deals with all nose and sinus conditions and has been involved in endoscopic sinus surgery and its extended applications since the early 1980’s.

Valerie said: ‘I am overwhelmed and deeply honoured to receive this award which recognises the importance of ENT and specifically conditions of the nose and sinuses which profoundly affect millions of people worldwide. I am extremely grateful to all the colleagues in the UK and abroad who have supported and encouraged me throughout my career, without whom this could not have happened.’

She has contributed extensively to the literature with 40 books and monographs, 100 chapters and over 390 peer-reviewed papers. She has lectured widely, delivering 20 eponymous lectures including the Semon, Stirk Adams, Stell, Wilde and Yearsley lectures.

She has received several prizes including the George Davey Howell (1990, 2008, 2015), W J Harrison (Royal Society of Medicine 2012), BMA Book awards and Jobson Horne Prize (2018).

She is the only non-American editor of ‘Cummings Otorhinolaryngology’ (4 editions). She is a Co-Chair of EPOS and has been Editor of ‘Rhinology’, General Secretary of the ERS, and President of ENT-UK.

She was elected to the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and made a Commander of the British Empire by the Queen for services to medicine in 2008. She received an honorary Doctorate of Medicine from the Universities of Brighton and Sussex for services to medicine and women in surgery in 2016.

She has received many international awards, prizes and Honorary Memberships including ERS, IRS and the American College of Surgeons and was ‘Master’ of BACO in 2018.

In 2019 she has been made an Honorary Member of the ENT-UK, received the first Lifetime Achievement award from the British Rhinological Society and was also given a Lifetime Achievement award on behalf of the American Rhinologic Society, International Rhinologic Society and International Society of Inflammation and Allergy of the Nose (ISIAN).

She has been made a Dame Commander in the 2024 King’s New Year Honours for services to rhinology.

Her hobbies include archaeology, cooking and eating.