by Serefnur Öztürk, Neşe Çelebisoy, and Nerses Bebek
On 3-4 September, 2021, the Virtual Regional Teaching Course in Turkey took place, with more than 250 local medical professionals participating in the online event, including neurologists, residents, and rehabilitation specialists.
The event was organised with the help and support of the EAN and the Turkish Neurology Association, with the main purpose of updating knowledge in selected current neurological topics. The faculty of 18 speakers featured several prominent and well-known European Neurologists who were invited to take part.
Day 1 began with ‘Neurogenetics and Rare Neurological Disorders’, featuring very informative lectures from Jean Marc Burgunder (Switzerland) on ‘Basic Genetic Concepts’; Antonio Federico (Italy) on ‘Rare Neurological Disorders; Concepts, Diagnosis, International networks’; Maria Judith Molnar (Hungary) on ‘Genetic analysis techniques in rare diseases’; Esra Battaloğlu (Turkey) on ‘Genetic treatment strategies’; and both Federico and Molnar on ‘Neuromuscular Diseases’ with his colleague Maria Judith Molnar (Hungary).
Two interactive workshops were also presented by Burgunder and Battaloğlu, on ‘Dementias and Alzheimer Disease’ and ‘Neurological Channelopathies’, respectively. Then the second topic of the day, Stroke, was addressed via ‘Burden and prevention’ presented by Şerefnur Öztürk (Turkey) and ‘Gold standards in acute stroke intervention’ by Patrik Michel (Switzerland).
The second day continued with the main topic ‘Epilepsy: As a Disorder of The New Century. Where We Are?’ with excellent contributions from Betül Baykal (Turkey) on ‘2017 ILAE Classification of Epileptic Seizures and Epilepsies’; José Serratosa (Spain) on ‘Special epilepsy populations’; Tim von Oertzen (Austria) on ‘Investigational procedures’; Hannah Cock (UK) on Status Epilepticus; and Hatice Kurucu (UK) presenting an RRFS lecture on ‘New info on possibilities for Neurologists in Training/grants’. Three interactive workshops were presented on Day 2, by Reetta Kälviäinen (Finland) as well as Cock and von Oertzen. Finally the virtual meeting concluded with the topic ‘Neuro-ophthalmology’ with talks from Simon Hickman (UK) on ‘Optic neuritis’ and Neşe Çelebisoy (Turkey) on ‘Papilledema and idiopathic intracranail hypertension’.
All the presentations were received with great interest by the Turkish neurologists and other specialists and many questions were posed and answered. As a result, the Virtual Regional Teaching Course in Turkey was a very interesting and useful event.
