Page 55 - Inaugural Lecture Prof Dr Ahmad Sobri Muda

Ahmad Sobri Muda

AN EVOLVING NEW SPECIALITY

Interventional neuroradiology was made popular in the early
1990s with the intra-arterial embolization of brain arteriovenous
malformations with silastic beads injected directly into the carotid
arteries. In the 1970s, Serbinenko, a Russian neurosurgeon,
published his method for treating cerebral aneurysms and carotid
cavernous sinus fistulas endovascularly with a detachable latex
balloon. He invented a method for treating intracranial aneurysms
by delivering detachable balloons into the aneurysm or internal
carotid artery to the blood vessels or the lesion. The first procedure
was done in 1970 in Moscow, when an internal carotid artery was
trapped with a balloon, to cure a carotid-cavernous fistula. He was
widely regarded as the pioneer neurointerventionist. This technique
was later refined by those practising neurointerventionists all over
the world, particularly in France, Germany and where interventional
neuroradiology flourished in early years. Groups in Lariboisiere,
Bicerte, and Rothschild expanded it further to involve training and
development of new interventional neuroradiology procedures. In
the 1980s, a group of pioneering neurointerventionalists in North
America and Europe began to widen these procedures to include
treating surgically difficult or inoperable intracranial aneurysms,
traumatic head and highly vascular lesions of the face and head.
Interventional radiology first appeared in Malaysia in the late
1990s, when the University Hospital in Petaling Jaya obtained its
first angiography system through the Colombo Plan’s Technical
Assistance Programme. In January 1950, the Commonwealth
Conference on Foreign Affairs in Colombo envisioned the Colombo
Plan for Cooperative Economic and Social Development in Asia
Pacific as a collaborative collaboration for South and Southeast
Asia’s socioeconomic development. Drs. Joginder Singh and Ah-
Hoo Ang were early interventionists. Dato Abdul Samad Sakijan,

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