Robert Carachi - Atlas of Paediatric Surgical Imaging: A Clinical and Diagnostic Approach

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This radiology atlas is a comprehensive compendium of paediatric surgical conditions encountered in a busy childrens teaching hospital. The expertise is drawn from a collection of current and archival images spanning three generations of paediatric surgeons and radiologists. This book deals with conditions that are encountered by the doctors who are in training for hospital practice or general practice and acts as a reference manual for most conditions encountered in childhood. I am grateful to late Professor Dan Young for passing his entire collection of images to me.

The book is organized in seven sections that are each dedicated to an anatomical region. Each section lists conditions under the categories of congenital, infection/inflammation, trauma, tumour, and acquired. It is hoped that this layout will make it simple to access and acquire knowledge of the conditions. As this book is on the use of radiological images in the development of a diagnosis, the text is based on a definition of the condition, clinical symptoms and signs, and the best imaging, with a detailed description of the radiological signs that indicate the conditions.

Line illustrations are used to illustrate some sections, and clinical photographs and pathological specimens are used to explain some radiological signs.

Dan Young, who died aged 80, was a man of boundless compassion whose reputation for always striving to do the best for each of his children stretched around the globe. Both a skilful, ground-breaking surgeon and an admired academic, he became Glasgow Universitys First Professor of Surgical Paediatrics. Yet he never forgot, or was forgotten by, his patients, many of whom remained in touch for years.

Just weeks before he died, one of his visitors was a mother who had lost her son 14 years earlier. She still remembered him caring for her boy as though he was his own.

A further mark of the esteem in which he was held was the renaming of the Glasgow Unit, where he worked for more than 20 years, as the Dan Young Neonatal Surgical Unit. A support centre run by the Scottish Spina Bifida Association (SSBA), which he had served as Honorary President, also bears his name.

In the real sense of the word Dan had that unique, and sadly now rarely seen, vocation to his profession, said SSBA Chief Executive Andrew Wynd. For him, long hours and hard graft were not something to be challenged, but something to be celebrated because in that commitment grew greater understanding and knowledge, greater experience and wisdomalthough he would never have acknowledged any of these qualities in himself.

Born in Skipness, Argyll, Dan grew up on Lower Carbarns Farm, Netherton, outside Wishaw, and was educated at Netherton Public School, Wishaw Academy Primary School, and Wishaw High School.

In 1950, he began his medical studies at Glasgow University and during that time filled in as a Locum Resident on both the medical and surgical sides at the citys Royal Hospital for Sick Children. This was when he first became aware of the multiple health problems and high mortality rate of babies born with congenital defects, an experience that inspired him to specialise in this field.

Following his graduation in 1956, he completed his national service on a special short service commission to the Ghanaian government, where he was in charge of the medical reception station at a recruiting centre in Kumasi. From there, he went to the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, gaining a diploma in tropical medicine and hygiene, before returning to Glasgow to become an Assistant Lecturer in the Universitys Physiology Department. From 1961 to 1964, he was a Registrar in Surgery, during which time he became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh. There then followed a spell at the world-famous The Hospital for Sick Children at Great Ormond Street in London, where he was a Senior Registrar and Resident Assistant Surgeon. In the late 1960s, he was a Senior Lecturer in Paediatric Surgery at Londons Institute of Child Health and Honorary Consultant Surgeon at Great Ormond Street and the Queen Elizabeth Hospital for Children in Hackney.

Dan returned north in 1969 to become Head of the Department of Surgical Paediatrics at Glasgow University, based at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children. In 1971, the hospitals state-of-the-art Neonatal Surgical Unit was established at Yorkhill, and the following year, he became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in Glasgow. His career spanned an era of many advances in his speciality, and in the 1960s and 1970s, he was involved in the introduction of the first shunts to control hydrocephalus in new-borns, a procedure that hugely enhanced the life expectancy of significant numbers of babies born with spina bifida and hydrocephalus. He also treated a wide range of other conditions, including deformities such as cleft lip and cleft palate.

Whilst developing a fine paediatric surgery department, he had also cemented his reputation as an excellent Educator, training surgeons from all over the world and helping to establish the specialty of paediatric surgery in various countries. He was an Honorary Member of the associations of paediatric surgeons in Hungary, Egypt, South Africa, and America, as well as a Visiting Lecturer to Japanese and Australasian organisations, and was awarded a Doctorate from the University of Wrocaw for his contribution in Poland and internationally.