DOHA: Three graduate doctors from Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar (WCMC-Q) have presented research at a key international neurology conference.
Dr Mais Alkawaz, Dr Ayman Al Jurdi and Dr Mujahed Laswi presented posters at the 2015 annual meeting of American Academy of Neurology in Washington DC.
The physicians were students when they presented research at the forum, which took place shortly before their graduation ceremony. It is unusual for medical students to have the opportunity to present research at such an event while they are in college, but Dr Naim Haddad, Associate Professor, Clinical Neurology, WCMC-Q, was confident their projects were of sufficient quality to merit participation.
He said, “This is one of the largest and most important events for neurology, attended by many top neurologists. This was an incredible opportunity for the students. Presenting their projects in Washington DC marked the culmination of a year of hard work carrying out clinical research at Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC), which delivered interesting and worthwhile results.” The meeting was held at Walter E Washington Convention Centre and attracted over 2,500 abstracts from neurology researchers from across the globe.
Dr Alkawaz presented a poster on her project about idiopathic intracranial hypertension in Qatar, a rare, serious disease characterised by increased pressure around the brain that causes headaches and nausea and can lead to loss of vision if not treated.
The project was supervised by Dr Marc Dinkin, Director, Neuro-Ophthalmology, New York–Presbyterian Hospital, Weill Cornell Medical Centre, and Dr Fatima Al Mannei, Specialist Ophthalmologist, HMC. Dr Al Jurdi and Dr Laswi worked on a project that mapped the incidence of epilepsy in Qatar and made discoveries about the most likely causes among different nationalities.
The project studied charts of several hundred HMC patients and found that those of South East Asian origin were more likely to have developed epilepsy due to infectious diseases affecting the brain, while among the Qatari population stroke was more commonly the cause.
The Peninsula
