It is with sadness that I announce the recent death of Vedran Deletis. He was born in Croatia and qualified and worked there until a scholarship to Texas in 1985. He also worked in Uppsala and Queens Square, London, completed his doctoral thesis in Clinical Neurophysiology and then settled in New York where he was Director of the Intraoperative Neurophysiology Department in St. Luke’s/Roosevelt Hospital and an Associate Professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. He dedicated his career to Intraoperative Neurophysiology (ION). Dr Deletis established a hugely successful fellowship program for ION in New York; its fellows went on to spread their knowledge and experience throughout the world. He published numerous papers in ION, especially on ION of the motor system and was editor of one of the leading books in the field of Intraoperative Neurophysiology in Neurosurgery and a founder of the International Society for Intraoperative Neurophysiology (ISIN) and served as its first president. Towards the end of his career he spent more time in Croatia. He was a giant of ION whose life’s work and legacy will surely endure beyond his passing.
Dr Vedran Deletis
In happier news, IFCN has recently been pleased to add a new set of on-line teaching material to its website. Few have done more for Clinical Neurophysiology and for education than Erik Stalberg and now he has most kindly now made available to us a series of lectures and demonstrations of nerve conduction and EMG studies, from individual nerves to complex procedures, some short and some far longer. I commend to those in training and to all those longer in the tooth who’d like to be refreshed in their practice. I take this opportunity to thank him, on behalf of IFCN as well as present and future trainees.When you look at these, since I hope you will, you’ll notice that our website is smartening up slowly but surely as well. We, (by which I mean Kim Zaiss and Tina Shahrizaila in particular) are upgrading it, especially for on-line education. Those who have been involved in IT will realise that such matters are never as simple as they appear, so please be patient while we do this in addition to other more routine work.
While those from the northern hemisphere were enjoying some summer holidays your hard working IFCN officers have not been idle. Last month our secretary, treasurer and I visited our colleagues in the Indonesian Society in Jakarta to help organised next year’s ICCN and to inspect the conference centre. We had had many Zoom meetings in this regard, but there is still no substitute for sitting in a room to help move things forward to and truly understand what will be best for a mainly South-East Asian community in Clinical Neurophysiology.
Our visit to the Congress Centre was fascinating, not least because after 30 years it is being completely renovated inside. We were shown round by workmen and staff, and everyone wore hard hats, (see photo). The centre will work for us very well and is only a few hundred metres from the reasonably priced congress hotel, and in quieter part of the city around a park with the largest football stadium in the country at its centre. I take this opportunity to thank all our Indonesian hosts for their work and their hospitality. Our site visits also extended to restaurants for dinner, with a beautiful one again within walking distance from the hotels.
Next stop for Tina and I was a short visit to Da Nang in Vietnam for the South-East Asian Neurological Association Congress. It opened with speeches and then the excitement of dancing girls followed immediately by a short talk from your president. Rarely can the mood in any room in history have flattened so quickly.
It was fascinating to attend the meeting to see how colleagues’ congresses work. There were other highlights too. We were richly entertained to dinner by our Vietnamese hosts, for instance. The congress hotel looked out over a busy road to a long beach. Before and after work the beaches were full as people bathed, most having arrived on motorbikes. (photo). I thought they were a hardy bunch, being used to British sea temperatures, but when I swam I found it was warm; 30 degrees C. or so.
A highlight was the gala dinner, outdoors and unfolding over 3 hours or so. As we enjoyed our meal, on stage there was a series of awards as eminent teachers in the region were honoured with awards. It was touching to see these older guys, (and they were men in those days) venerated by their students, who now have become themselves leaders. Each gave a speech of thanks and one man said that if his students were not better than him, he thought he had failed.
Then came two singers for a short interlude, they alternated and behind each came the dancing girls again, with a costume change for each number. But then, for around 90 minutes, each national society then came up on stage to sing a number or to dance. At the end all those stuffy guests from the UK and beyond were yanked up as well to sing their hearts out, to Mary Hopkin’s ‘Those Were the Days.’ Whatever you may think of karaoke, the effect of the evening was to cement togetherness and a shared enjoyment in each other’s company which was a joy to behold. Don’t expect ExCo to break into song at the next ICCN just yet though. Thanks to our hosts and to the SEANA for the invitation and for an excellent congress and unforgettable gala. (photo).
Best wishes,
Jonathan Cole