Dr. Jose Fayad, MD, is known for his expertise in otology, and for his gentle approach to patients. Fluent in French, Spanish, English and Arabic, Dr. Fayad is able to communicate easily with patients from many backgrounds. Between surgeries and patient consultations, he prefers to relax by reading French literature – classics by Hugo, Beaudelaire, Flaubert, and Mauriac. French is also Dr. Fayad’s language of choice at home in Southern California., where he lives with wife two children. A horticulture enthusiast, on weekends Dr. Fayad is outside planting fruit trees and grape vines, and cultivating a garden of camellias and gardenias, the exotic flowers favored by his family.

Dr. Fayad has a real passion for ear medicine and science. This passion has its foundation in an early experience he had during medical school in Toulouse, France. Dr. Fayad had decided to specialize in otology and was completing his residency in ear, nose and throat (ENT) medicine at the University Paul Sabatier Hospital when he helped treat an otosclerosis patient with a stapes procedure. Her hearing loss was significant enough that most of Dr. Fayad’s presurgery interview with her had to be conducted in writing.

Immediately after completing her stapes surgery, he tested her surgical outcome by asking her a few questions in the operating room. She heard every word, even at a whisper, and Dr. Fayad felt a rush of excitement that he’d been able to help a patient in such a profound and immediate way. His early enthusiasm for otology brought him to a visiting physicians’course at the House Ear Institute many years ago, where he was inspired by the House physicians who mentored him. He is thrilled to be working alongside those same physicians now, and, feels the same surge of excitement at the conclusion of every stapes surgery, a procedure he has now performed for hundreds of patients.

He feels an equal sense of reward at the completion of each cochlear implant surgery, and with every milestone he reaches in his collaborative research investigations with Dr. Fred Linthicum in the Histopathology Laboratory. Dr. Fayad feels he is where he should be, at the “Mecca” of hearing science and medicine, where the most exciting happenings in neurotology occur.

Dr. Fayad’s calm and soft-spoken nature belies the many traumatic experiences he endured as a youth in war-torn Lebanon. As a 16-year-old, he literally dodged a bullet in Beirut, and his father realized it was time to move the family out of the country. After many narrow escapes and family separations, the family safely relocated to Venezuela, where Dr. Fayad completed high school at the Lycée Francais in Caracas before heading to France for college and medical school. Dr. Fayad is thankful that he pursued his dream to practice otology at House and brought his family to the U.S.