Walsh and NANOS Meetings Are Successfully Engrafted

Who was minding the neuro-ophthalmology concession in North American from February 9 to 14, 2002? Good question, because over 270 neuro-ophthalmologists gathered during that time at Copper Mountain, Colorado for the first joint Frank B. Walsh (34th) and North American Neuro-Ophthalmology Society (NANOS) (28th) Meetings. A year ago, NANOS members had voted to combine the two meetings so as to conserve on time and travel expenses. The Walsh meeting, organized by Lanning B. Kline, MD (Birmingham, AL) and William F. Hoyt, MD (San Francisco, CA), featured Peter C. Burger, MD (Baltimore, MD), neuropathology, and Ann G. Osborn, MD (Salt Lake City, UT), neuroradiology, as honored guests. Among the 20 “fascinomas” presented, several got past the audience, and a few even stumped the two experts. The organizers selected four teams of co-moderators, one member of each team having been the fellowship mentor of the other: Shirley H. Wray, MD (Boston, MA) and David Kaufman, MD (East Lansing, MI); Steven E. Feldon, MD (Rochester, NY) and Deborah I. Friedman, MD (Buffalo, NY); James J. Corbett, MD (Jackson, MI) and Daniel E. Jacobson, MD (Marshfield, WI); and William F. Hoyt, MD (San Francisco, CA) and John B. Selhorst, MD (St. Louis, MO). These pairings elicited maudlin expressions of gratitude from the former fellows and melodramatic bursts of pride from the former mentors. Some things were probably left unsaid. The Walsh meeting segued smoothly into the NANOS meeting, which included 31 platform presentations and 61 posters (see NANOS Abstracts, pp XXX), two high-powered symposia, an expert panel discussion on clinical controversies, an educational skills transfer session on PowerPoint presentations (Edmond J. Fitzgibbon, MD, Bethesda, MD), a practice management session on “making ends meet in academic neuro-ophthalmology” (Richard H. Legge, MD, Omaha, NE), and a biostatistics seminar (Laura J. Balcer, MD, Philadelphia, PA). The two symposia occupied a half-day each. The first covered coagulopathies and vasculopathies, organized by Valerie Biousse, MD (Atlanta, GA). It featured Marie-Germaine Bousser, MD (Paris, France) and Louis R. Caplan, MD (Boston, MA) as invited guests, as well as Mark L. Moster, MD (Philadelphia, PA), Shirley H. Wray, MD (Boston, MA), Judith E. A. Warner, MD (Salt Lake City, UT), and Dr. Biousse herself as speakers. The second symposium, covering molecular genetics, was organized by guest Edwin M. Stone, MD, PhD (Iowa City IA) and included John B. Kerrison, MD, PhD (San Antonio, TX), Jeffrey L. Bennett, MD, PhD (Denver, CO), David Lynch, MD, PhD (Philadelphia, PA), and Dr. Stone himself as speakers. As part of his teaching, Dr. Stone challenged the audience to apply newly learned principles of molecular genetics to smoking out bogus manuscript abstracts. Larry Frohman, MD (Newark, NJ) got the highest score and won the prize: a bottle of Chablis. At the closing banquet, Dr. Balcer announced that the NANOS Board had approved the induction of the following new members: Valerie Biousse, MD (Atlanta, GA), Mohan S. Chandran, MD (Sandusky, OH), Steven Covici, MD (Springfield, MA), Ramesh Gopalaswamy, MD (St. Clair Shores, MI), Francis P. Grenn, MD (Marshfield, MA), Adriana A. Kori, MD (Bend, OR), Jeffrey W. Nichols, MD (Chicago, IL), Lois A. Polatnick, MD (Evanston, IL), Prem S. Subramanian, MD, PhD (Silver Spring, MD), David I. Turok, MD (Buffalo Grove, IL), and Cybele Woon, MD (Columbus, TX). The following members were transformed into NANOS Fellows: Michael C. Brodsky, MD (Little Rock, AK), Lynn K. Gordon, MD, PhD (Los Angeles, CA), Steven R. Hamilton, MD, (Seattle, WA), Sharon J. Johnstone, MD (Phoenix, AZ), David F. Klink, DO (Bethesda, MD), Anil D. Patel, MD (Saskatoon, Saskatchewan), Robert L. Tomsak, MD, PhD (Cleveland, OH), and David A. Weinberg, MD (Burlington, VT). Tulay Kansu, MD (Ankara, Turkey) was approved as an International Fellow. FIGUREFigure: Ronald M. Burde, MD (New York, NY) accepts the NANOS Distinguished Service Award.FIGUREFigure: Thomas J. Carlow, MD (Alburquerque, NM), right, displays the plaque signifying his delivery of the first annual William F. Hoyt Lecture at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Opthalmology, New Orleans, LA, in October 2001. Guess who is pictured on the left?The NANOS Distinguished Service Award was given to Ronald M. Burde, MD (New York, NY). In presenting the award on behalf of the NANOS Board, Steven A. Newman, MD (Charlottesville, VA) reminded the audience that Dr. Burde was a founder of the Neuro-ophthalmic Pathology Club (which became the Walsh Society in 1979), the second editor (after J. Lawton Smith, MD) of the Journal of Neuro-Ophthalmology (1994–2001), a mentor to 36 neuro-ophthalmology fellows, and a role model for countless medical students and residents, including Dr. Newman himself. Given in recognition of pivotal contributions to NANOS, this award has been bestowed previously on six individuals: Thomas J. Carlow, MD (Albuquerque, NM), Susan Carlow (Albuquerque, NM), Robert B. Daroff, MD (Cleveland, OH), Joel S. Glaser, MD (Miami, FL), William F. Hoyt, MD (San Francisco, CA), and David L. Knox, MD (Baltimore, MD). Barrett J. Katz MD (Washington, DC) announced that the first NANOS-sponsored annual William F. Hoyt Lecture at the American Academy of Ophthalmology Annual Meeting was given in 2001 by Thomas J. Carlow, MD (Albuquerque, NM). According to Dr. Katz, Dr. Carlow was selected not only for his many scholarly contributions, but also for being the “driving force behind the NANOS.” The Hoyt Lecture will be published annually in this journal. Dr. Carlow's lecture, “Ophthalmoplegic Migraine: Is It Really Migraine?” will appear in the September 2002 issue. The NANOS Young Investigator Award went to Valerie Biousse, MD (Altlanta, GA). A native of Cauderan, France, Dr. Biousse originally contemplated a career in physical education, having trained with the French Military Equestrian School while also training in track, hurdles, and long jump. But “while jumping without the horse,” she broke her leg, so she decided to go to medical school, a choice that has led to a stockpile of articles, book chapters, books, and presentations that would make an academic neuro-ophthalmologist 20 years older feel proud. She had decided early in medical school to become a cardiothoracic surgeon and “do lots of heart transplants and create a good artificial heart” until she met Marie-Germaine Bousser, MD (now Professor of Neurology, and Chairman, Department of Neurology, Lariboisiere Hospital, Paris), who steered her toward neuro-ophthalmology. In 1996, Dr. Biousse left her position as staff neurologist at Hotel Dieu in Paris to do a 6-month fellowship in neuro-ophthalmology at Emory University in Atlanta, GA, under the auspices of Nancy J. Newman, MD. Expecting to return to professorial duties in Paris, she was sidetracked by an offer of a faculty position in neuro-ophthalmology at Emory provided she would complete a residency in ophthalmology (which she will do in June of this year). Dr. Biousse was pleased to discover that teaching has been an important component of her academic progress at Emory, whereas in France she describes teaching more as a “hobby” with no real contribution toward promotion. Meanwhile, between teaching responsibilities and residency in ophthalmology, she completed the research for which she is being honored this year. It flows from the strength of the molecular genetics program at Emory and specifically Douglas Wallace, PhD, who works exclusively on explicating mitochondrial diseases. Needing someone to look at the eyes of his mitochondrial disease model mice and characterize their phenotypic abnormalities, Dr. Wallace solicited the help of Drs. Newman and Biousse, who have now examined mice from three engineered mice models for evidence of mitochondrial disease with slit lamp biomicroscopy, electrophysiology (ERG and VEP), and histology (light microscopy and EM). These mice show multiple and varied disease manifestations, including congenital cataracts, optic nerve hamartomas, and decreased ERG amplitudes. FIGUREFigure: Valerie Biousse, MD (Atlanta, GA), center, accepts the 2002 NANOS Young Investigator Award. John B. Selhorst, MD (St. Louis, MO), outgoing NANOS Board chair, left; Neil R. Miller, MD (Baltimore, MD), outgoing NANOS President, right.FIGUREFigure: Nicholas T. Monsul, MD (Pittsburgh, PA), right, accepts 2002 NANOS Best Resident-Fellow Presentation Award from Neil R. Miller, MD (Baltimore, MD).The NANOS award for the best resident–fellow presentation at the Annual Meeting went to Nicholas T. Monsul, MD (Pittsburgh, PA). After finishing his ophthalmology residency at Yale, he moved on to a neuro-ophthalmology fellowship at the Wilmer Institute with Neil Miller, MD. The research for which he is honored deals with axonal regeneration in the optic nerve, conducted under the mentorship of Drs. Paul Hoffman and John Griffin during a 5-month postdoctoral research fellowship at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. His work involves injecting intraocular dibutyryl cyclic AMP into rats either directly before or after optic nerve axotomy and inspecting the nerves at 2 to 8 weeks later. He found that nerves from eyes so injected, before or after the injury, showed axonal regeneration, but control nerves did not. There is a mystical impulse to Dr. Monsul's research. When he was l2 years old, a close family member sustained a fall and was rendered paraplegic. He remembers being upset at the time that the spinal cord could not simply regenerate. Since then, he has been on a mission to try to change the remorseless prognosis of similar central nervous system events. He is currently completing an orbit/oculoplastics fellowship under the direction of Kimberly P. Cockerham, MD and John Kennerdell, MD (Pittsburgh, PA). With these interests, why choose ophthalmology as a career? Because, Dr. Monsul says, “trying to understand the complexity of simply raising your hand is almost beyond comprehension, so if you are going to try to fix an incredibly complex system, chose the simplest part.” At some point, he plans to get back to classic piano, a semiprofessional pursuit in earlier days, and mountain biking (he now wears a helmet).

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