SNUCH to perform 1,000 surgeries for moyamoya disease in children
SNUCH to perform 1,000 surgeries for moyamoya disease in children
The largest number of cases done in a single institution
Unraveled the causative gene through active research
Seoul National University Children‘s Hospital (SNUCH) has performed the operation on the 1,000th children with moyamoya disease (MMD) last month. It was the world's largest record as a single medical institution, the result of continuous treatment since encephaloduroarteriosynangiosis (EDAS) surgery was first performed in April 1987.
Since 2008, SNUCH has performed more than 100 surgeries for moyamoya disease every year and has so far performed a total of 1,900 surgeries for MMD including 117 cases of last year.
The 1,000th patient was a 12-year old girl who was hospitalized with intermittent asthenia and cramps to undergo EDAS in the left cerebral hemisphere and occipital lobe last month. She recovered well after surgery, and is scheduled for surgery in the right cerebral hemisphere next month.
SNUCH provides patient-centric integrated medical services for children with neurological disorders, and also separately runs the Pediatric Clinical Neuroscience Center to treat MMD patients in cooperation with the Departments of pediatrics & adolescent medicine and rehabilitation medicine.
Professor Seung-Ki Kim said, "Clinical experience is most important for MMD treatment since surgery is the only surgical option, so our achievement of performing surgeries on 1,000 children with MMD has significance to the treatment and care of MMD."
Medical professionals at the Pediatric Clinical Neuroscience Center published an article that summarized SNUHCH experience in surgical treatment of 410 patients in the official journal of the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) in 2010, and are engaged in a translational research on neurological rare diseases of children and adolescents as well as MMD as being selected the Healthcare R&D Project's Rare Disease Translational Research Center of the Ministry of Health and Welfare in 2012. They were also internationally recognized for their competence by discovering the gene (retinaldehyde dehydrogenase 2, RALDH2) that triggers MMD and reported the finding in 2015.