VIREPA - Neuroimaging - 3rd edition



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Clinical Pharmacology & Pharmacotherapy

EEG in the diagnosis & management of epilepsy

Genetics of Epilepsy

Course content

The course will cover the methodological basics of neuroimaging techniques and their application to the diagnostic work up and management of people with new onset or chronic epilepsy, adults and children.
It will be pragmatic and aimed at the general neurologist / pediatric neurologist / pediatrician / radiologist dealing with - but not necessarily exclusively involved in - epilepsy care.
The course material will focus on the basic role of different imaging techniques for the diagnosis and management of epilepsy: in particular the role of MRI in temporal and in extratemporal lobe epilepsy; SPECT, PET and PET-CT in partial epilepsy with negative MRI; functional MRI in presurgical work up of pharmacoresistant partial epilepsies.
Special attention will be given to practical aspects, including minimal standards for techniques, optimalisation of neuroimaging requests and reports, common misconceptions (positive and negative) and potential pitfalls, specifically in the context of epilepsy, adults and children.
The course will include definitions and examples of the cerebral lesions involved in epilepsy and their functional impact, together with neuroanatomy tutorials to help with accurately localizing lesions in the brain. The course will discuss the sensitivity, specificity and prognostic value of imaging features, benign variants and artefacts, and the possible diagnostic significance of non epileptogenic lesions as well as maturational aspects.
The course will address all aspects of neuroimaging techniques, extending from standard CT and MRI to presurgical work up including SPECT, PET, functional MRI and multimodality imaging, with their specific indications and requirements. Since this is a first basic course, intended to be relevant for day to day practice in average clinical circumstances, the emphasis will be on standard MRI and functional neuroimaging techniques most commonly used in pharmacoresistant epilepsies.
Clinical cases will be presented to illustrate the role of each imaging modality for diagnosis, prognosis and management of epilepsy in adults and children, and to increase interactions between participants. Imaging material will be submitted exclusively by the teachers.
Basic practical knowledge of MRI (not only of CT) and a minimum of daily epilepsy practice are a prerequisite, as image analyzing techniques and clinical cases presented will only focus on epilepsy.

Learning objectives

The course, on completion, will enable participants to improve the quality of the diagnostic appoach in adults and children with new onset as well as chronic epilepsies. It will help to decide on the appropriate imaging study indicated for a specific clinical problem. It will improve the competence and confidence in the recognition, localization, and differentiation of epileptogenic lesions and functional impact of epilepsy as well as the understanding of the clinical significance of these two factors for diagnosis and management of epilepsy in adults and children.

Course format

The course itself is divided into 7 units of 2 / 3 weeks each, beginning with an introduction to the VIREPA e-learning platform, followed by 6 learning units. The learning material (textbooks and references) is available for download. The tasks to be worked on in each unit to achieve credits
should be solved within an active communication process among all participants, guided by the experts in the discussion fora on the e-learning platform. These tasks help to deepen the theoretically gained knowledge from the learning material and enable to transfer this knowledge to the clinical practice of each learner.

The participants are expected to spend about 8 hours (~4 hours/week) for individual study of the learning material, for reading/writing contributions in the forum and for the completion of the tasks.
All tutors are practically working in their special field, moderating the distance courses in addition to their regular duties. This gives participants the unique opportunity to draw upon their expertise and practical experience even beyond the mere requirements of the course.

Entry criteria 

  • Minimum 3 years training in neurology, neuropediatrics, neuroradiology, neuropsychology, clinical neurophysiology, psychiatry or neurosurgery, or combinations of these;
  • Minimum of 4 months of EEG training.

Certification

Successful participation in this course will be awarded with Credit Points for the core curriculum “Neuroimaging” for the European Certification in Epileptology for Medical Doctors of EUREPA. To pass, participants have to complete the tasks during the e-learning phase, including a series of general questions and diagnostic tasks which will be presented at the end of the course.

Duration

The course will start in the fall of 2009 and last until spring of 2010. The exact dates are still to be announced.

Course fee

750 Euro/respectively 700 Euro for EUREPA members. A restricted number of bursaries will be available. Full bursaries will only be available for particpants living in countries with "low" income. Most bursaries (for participants living in countries with "lower middle income") will be partial bursaries involving own payment of 250 Euro/respectively 200 Euro for EUREPA members. (See categories according to the statistics of the World Bank.)

Number of participants

up to 30

Technical requirements

Personal Computer or Mac (with Internet access)
Operating system: Windows 98 / 2000 / NT / XP, Apple Mac OS X, Linux/Unix
Internet access: Modem, ISDN or DSL (recommended)
Browser: Internet Explorer 5.5 (and higher), Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera, Konqueror
PDF-Reader (e.g. Adobe Acrobat)

Course Director

Catherine Chiron, MD, PhD, Co-chair of the ILAE Commission on Diagnostic Methods 
William Gaillard, MD, PhD, Chair of the ILAE Commission on Diagnostic Methods

Deadline for application

July 31st, 2009

Application

For application you have to fill in our online application form and your application must contain

  • a signed confirmation of the neurology department on the 4 months of EEG training;
  • a signed confirmation of the neurology department on the 3 years of neurological or comparable training
  • CV
  • list of publications

For further information, please contact

Epilepsy Academy Office
Maraweg 21
D - 33617 Bielefeld
Germany

Tel. +49 521 144 - 4310
Fax +49 521 144 - 4311

Email: office@epilepsy-academy.org
Web: http://www.epilepsy-academy.org