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Dr. Jannatara Shefa

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Published: 24 October 2016

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The Institute of Paediatric Neurodisorder and Autism (IPNA) in Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University (BSMMU) and International Child Neurology Association (ICNA) are proud to announce the ICNA Educational Meeting to be held in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh from 5-6 November 2016. The title of the meeting is “ICNA Educational Meeting: Towards Better Service in Child Neurology and Development”.

This jointly organized event is being held in Bangladesh for the first time, with the support of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Bangladesh, Bangladesh Paediatric Association (BPA) and Bangladesh Society for Child Neurology, Development and Disability (BSCNDD)

The event will host internationally reputed scholars and will focus on exchange of knowledge, updated scientific presentations and discussions on best practice in child neurology and neurodevelopment. Moreover, we also hope to show you the natural beauty of Cox’s Bazar, which boasts the longest natural sea beach in the world.

http://www.ipnabsmmu.edu.bd/

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ICNA

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Published: 20 October 2016

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We are pleased to announce that the 59th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society of Child Neurology will be held from June 15(Thu.) – 17(Sat.), 2017 at the Osaka International Convention Center (Grand Cube Osaka). I am greatly honored to be appointed President of this distinguished Meeting, and preparations are underway to ensure the fruitful Meeting will contribute to further advances in child neurology. The major programs of the plenary sessions will be “Talk on Down Syndrome -Support over a Life Time-” and “Current Status in Japanese Children with Learning Disorder”.

In the above plenary, “Talk on Down Syndrome –Support over a Life Time-“, there will be the following symposia: “Effort in Rehabilitation and Educational Fields for the Patients with Down Syndrome”, “Definitions and Clinical Feature of Acute Regression”, and “Treatment Strategies for Aging with Down Syndrome”. We welcome papers related to the above topics for either oral or poster presentations. Abstract Submission to the 59th Meeting will be available in this website from October 20, 2016 to December 6, 2016.

The Congress is calling for abstract submissions from foreign delegates (including foreign delegates currently in Japan) for the English session (oral/poster presentation). The registration fee for the first author will be waived on this occasion. Please read ‘call for abstract’ on our the 59 the Meeting homepage (http://www2.convention.co.jp/59jscn/english/callforabstract.html) carefully and submit your abstract at your soonest. As is widely known, Osaka boasts many places of interest and delicious food.

We hope you will enjoy the city during your visit. I and all of the members of the Meeting Steering Committee look forward to hosting you in Osaka on June 15(Thu.) to 17(Sat.), 2017.

Hiroshi Tamai, M.D., PhD
President
The 59th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society of Child Neurology

Professor, Department of Pediatrics
Osaka Medical College 569-8686
2-7 Daigaku-machi Takatsuki
Osaka Japan
TEL 81-726-83-1221
FAX 81-726-84-5798

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ICNA

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Published: 21 June 2016

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A phrase was introduced to neonatal units in the 1970s, “Have you Dubowitzed the baby?”, which referred to a new, accurate technique for estimating the gestational age or period of time between conception and birth of a newborn child, pioneered by Lilly and Victor Dubowitz, a feisty Hungarian and her South African husband. Both were based in England. Their method was simple but groundbreaking: they tested a baby for a number of neurological signs that change as it matures. Until then, there was no clear-cut method for assessing whether a small baby was premature or undernourished.

The obstetrician Valerie Farr had already identified superficial or external signs of a baby’s maturation, including skin colour. The Dubowitz Score, as it became known was revolutionary in quantifying accurately the developmental phases of the newborn. It comprised oftwo charts.Each contained a set of signs identifying stages of superficial and neurological development in the baby, such as whether or not they could flex their arms and legs. They graded each developmental sign on a scale of 0 to 4 or 5.

No other paediatrician had defined the stages of maturation in newborns so clearly.Neither had they used a score to break down each phase. Lilly and Victor Dubowitz anticipated that neurological development signs would give a better estimate than the superficial. The reverse by a slight margin proved to be true. Lilly then had a brain-wave. She added together the total score for both groups of signs. The results correlated astonishingly closely to the true gestational age of the babies.

A meticulous clinician,she based her research on 400 babies observed in isolation. Subsequently, she interviewed theirmothers about theirmenstrual cycle prior to pregnancy and the date of their last period. This factor was key to estimating the gestational age of the baby. Of the 400, 167 gave data sufficiently accurate for further analysis. Dubowitz worked at the Jessop Hospital for Women in Sheffield where her husband was in charge of the paediatric ward. Always close, the couple were engaged within a fortnight of meeting in 1960. A friend of Victor’s had promised Lilly a picnic in Virginia Water. When his vintage car sprang aleak, he enlisted Victor as chauffeur.

Smitten, he married Lilly three months later at the West London Synagogue.“Those Hungarian salami sandwiches she brought to the picnic went straight through my stomach and into my heart,” he said. Their research partnership was strong: Victor, who is an expert in muscular dystrophy, drew the original stick- baby figures for the Dubowitz Score. Easy to use, this was laid out on note-pads, only requiring the clinician to circle in pen the stages of maturation applying most closely to the baby under observation.

Dubowitz was collating her data when the head of paediatrics at Cornell Medical School in New York, who had met the familyin America, came to stay. Fascinated, he pressed herto publish in an American paediatric journal. Printed in 1970, the score was a great success. Within a month, 200 reprints were ordered. It was later translated. By then, Lilly was 40 and accustomed to radical changes. Born in Budapest as Lilly Magdalene Suzanne Sebök, she was the daughter of Julius, a Jewish textile engineer who was sent to a labour camp by the Nazis. He died of a heart attack after his release. His wife and daughter hid in a safe house with false papers provided by the Swedish embassy.

At 16, Lilly emigrated to Australia. Although she spoke little English and suffered from dyslexia, she found work as a technician in a biochemistry laboratory. She then persuaded the University of Melbourne to allow her to work by day and study medicine by night. Graduating in 1956,she was posted to London two years later to train in endocrinology at Hammersmith hospital. According to her own words, she became a paediatrician “by accident”, after moving to Sheffield.

Awaiting the transfer of a medical research grant, she was offered a temporary post in paediatrics. She had worked briefly in the field in Melbourne and accepted the challenge readily. Yearning to conduct research, she organised her timetable so that she visited neonatal wards by night and was free by day to do the school runs for her four sons: David,who has become a radiologist; Michael, who is a cardiologist; Gerald, who is an anaesthetist; and Daniel, who is an architect.

Asked how she combined mothering four boisterous boys with intense clinical research, Dubowitz would reply, “They know who’s in charge”. In 1973 she was awarded a doctorate in medicine by Sheffield university. She loathed fuss. Her tests were always simple, such as using a red ball of wool to test infant eyesight, or a rattle to evaluate hearing. Warm and empathetic, she was concerned that her research was of practical use, especially in the third world.

She and her husband visited remote jungle areas of Papua New Guinea to assess newborn babies. Using the score, they could evaluate if a baby was underweight due to malnutrition or premature birth or possibly illness, such as malaria in the mother. In a refugee camp on the Thai border with Burma, Dubowitz trained an uneducated Karen woman as her assistant. On migrating to America, the woman was employed as a hospital cleaner. Hearing this, Dubowitz telephoned the hospital and said, “This woman is the co-author of one of my papers.” A job was duly found for her as an assessor of newborn babies.

Retirement in 1995 did not dampen Dubowitz’s dynamism. She embarked on a 20-year investigation into the life of her uncle, Stefan Sebök, an architect who vanished in Russia during the Second World War. Armed with a clutch of photographs and family anecdotes, she visited archives abroad and accessed KGB files. A woman who rarely accepted “no” as an answer, she discovered that Sebök had collaborated extensively with the Bauhaus architect Walter Gropius. “Lilly was always very inquiring and questioned everything,” her husband recalled. The result, The Forgotten Architect, was published in 2012.

Before her death from cancer, Dubowitz and her son Daniel put the story on to a website. For leisure,she restored Persian rugs and her husband is the owner of a fine green silk tie, made by Dubowitz, and patterned with stick-figure babies.

Lilly Dubowitz, paediatrician, was born on March 20, 1930. She died on March 14, 2016, aged 85

cover photo: Lilly with Victor Dubowitz in 1960.

This article was originally published in The Times June 14 2016

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Prof Haluk Topaloğlu

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Published: 21 June 2016

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The founding father of Turkish Child Neurology, Professor Yavuz Renda (b.1932) has passed away on the 24th of July, 2015 after a long illness. His family roots aided Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in the construction of Modern Turkey in 1923.

Professor Renda established the backbones of our discipline in Turkey starting from early 1960s. This was parallel to the blossom of Child Neurology worldwide.

Yavuz Renda graduated from Ankara University Medical School in 1955. Between 1956 and 1960 he was trained as a Paediatric resident at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, Washington University in St. Louis. In 1960, he worked with Prof. Jean Holowitz at this institute, and this was his introduction to child neurology.

Professor Renda then moved to McGill University for a child neurology fellowship with Prof. Fred Andermann. He completed a MSc thesis on prematurity and spastic paraplegia in 1963. He then moved to the newly founded Hacettepe Children’s Hospital in Ankara, where he spent the rest of his academic career. He was one of the two Board Certified child neurologists in the country. The other one was Prof. Kalbiye Yalaz. Together, at the same unit they worked closely knit over the years. They have succeeded to develop a fully functioning department which naturally aided to grow and nourish other child neurology units countrywide.

He became a full professor in 1972. He was a visiting scientist studying epidemiology of epilepsy at the National Institutes of Health between 1980 and 1981. Starting from early 1980s Prof. Renda received recognition internationally.

He was one of the founders of the Mediterranean Society of Child Neurology (along with Shaul Harel and Yehuda Shapira). This Society was later on liaised with the European Paediatric Neurology Society (EPNS) and then to the Asian and Oceanian Society of Child Neurology Association (AOCNA). His membership to the ICNA was cardinal.

Prof. Renda continued to work as the chief of his unit until 1996 when he became the Dean of the Medical School at Hacettepe University. In between he had extra administrative duties such as Physician in Chief (1973-1977), Director, Institute of Child Development (1977-1980), and Institute of Neurology (1992-1995). He officially retired in 1999.

In 1999, he was awarded the Albert Schweitzer prize in medicine for his contribution to humanism by the Polish Medical Academy. Prof. Renda had memberships in various international organizations including the ICNA, the EPNS, and the AOCNA. He was the president of the AOCNA congress held in Istanbul in 1996. He was on the founding editorial board of the European Journal of Paediatric Neurology.

He had vast curiosity in various areas of Child Neurology, but mainly he did his research on epilepsy. Towards the end of his career he developed interest in epilepsy and genetics. And for that reason his last paper was on the description of a new disease with a form of spinal muscular atrophy and myoclonic epilepsy. This condition was identified as an allelic form of Farber disease (Zhou J, et al. Spinal muscular atrophy associated with progressive myoclonic epilepsy is caused by mutations in ASAH1. Am J Hum Genet 2012;91:5-14). He has 62 peer reviewed publications in the PubMed Professor Renda was a great teacher and a spirit to his pupils.

He had deep concerns for the benefit of his patients and their families. He was a considerate man to his colleagues and juniors. He listened to others’ views and gave credit while preserving his own insight. He had an eye to spot the talented. His looks were very impressive. When we were medical students in 1970s, I remember discussing in between us how Professor Renda looked like a loyal, honest and determined sheriff coming from the western movies.

His teaching sessions were very creative. When we were at grade three (in Turkey medical schools are for six years), there was one particular lecture on the white matter disorders of the brain, which he gave in the form of a two hour seminar with other faculty from biochemistry and neuropathology. That is still remembered.

Professor Renda is survived by his wife Prof. Günsel Renda, an art historian, two children and two grandchildren. His principles will be followed by generations.

Haluk Topaloglu
Department of Child Neurology
Hacettepe Children’s Hospital
06100 Ankara
Turkey

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