The concept of the EPNS Visiting Teacher initiative:  A volunteer professor / senior/ distinguished member of the EPNS, from Europe who is a recognised expert in a certain field, visits a nominated host centre in a country in Europe which is classified by the World Bank per capita income group 1, 2 or 3, or EPNS category WB4B (email info@epns.info for clarification) for a short stay of intense teaching. Travel and stay will be supported by EPNS. It may be considered that these visits will take place annually thereafter, if the first visit proves to be a success.

2 EPNS Visiting Teachers were awarded for 2023:

Professor Tally Lerman-Sagie from Sackler School of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Israel will be visiting the Alexandru Obregia Hospital/ Carol Davila University of Medicine in Romania this has been postponed until 2024.

Professor David Neubauer from the University Children’s Hospital, Ljubljana, Slovenia has visited  Almaty City Children’s Hospital in Kazakhstan and we are delighted to share the following 2 reports:

Report from Professor Marzhan Lepesova and all the team in Kazakhstan

On March 17-18, 2023, a master class “Diagnosis and treatment of severe forms of epilepsy in children” was held in Children City Hospital, Almaty, Kazakhstan. Professor David Neubauer, MD, PhD from University Children’s Hospital , Ljubljana , Slovenia was invited under the EPNS Programme Visiting Teachers. Paediatric neurologists, neonatologists, neurophysiologists, neurosurgeons, residents, interns of the Medical University took part in the master class. The master class covered the problems of diagnosing neonatal seizures, management of epilepsy and paroxysmal conditions in new-borns, issues of rare neurological diseases with a debut at 1 year of age. Lectures by Professor David Neubauer were very informative and interesting. He is a very good and patient teacher. Of particular interest was a lecture on the treatment of epilepsy with cannabinoids – this type of treatment is not used in Kazakhstan. Local doctors presented interesting clinical cases, analysed the experience of surgical treatment of resistant forms of epilepsy in children. Professor David Neubauer took part in a consultation on a child with type 1 glutaric aciduria and a child with paroxysmal dyskinesias, valuable recommendations were given on further management tactics. Thank you for give us this opportunity.

 

Report from Professor David Neubauer, visiting teacher from Slovenia

This is a short report on my activities during my short visit at Almaty, Kazakhstan. To Almaty I have come upon kind invitation of professor Lepesova, who is the Head of the Department of Neurology of the Kazakh-Russian Medical University in Almaty and also the president of the NGO Association of Paediatric Neurologists. The meeting was at the Lecture room of the Department and 70 participants were participating each day (17 and 18 March) with a lot of discussions on each topic (translated). The lectures were 90 minutes’ long as all my slides have previously been translated into Russian language and presented at the same time as mine – 2 screens – one in English and the other in Russian (the Russian translations were excellently prepared by one of their young doctors – dr Ismat to whom I am very grateful for this). The topics of the lectures were: Neonatal seizures and epilepsies, Paroxysmal movement disorders and paroxysmal eye movement disturbances (Day 1), EEG and aEEG in NICU/PICU, Rare diseases in Child Neurology and Treatment of resistant epilepsies with cannabinoids (Day 2). During these 2-day stay at their hospital their young doctors have presented different difficult cases which we have discussed upon (mainly resistant epilepsies of different age group) and 2 cases presented at the spot – one 4-year girl with paroxysmal stereotypic behaviour and in their PICU a case of metabolic encephalopathy in a 1,5 year-old boy, which on the spot proved to be glutaric aciduria. During the lectures and stay at the hospital I have felt very friendly atmosphere which was even further extended to pleasant two evenings outside and listening to a nice concert of their traditional music and dances.