• neuropaediatrics

Surprisingly paediatric and adult neurology practice appear, superficially, separate disciplines with training pathways that rarely cross. The truth is that we, in time, will inherit some, though not all patients, and knowledge of neuropaediatrics is an essential part of our training curriculum. There are obvious points of contact such as the “ handover” of the adolescent with epilepsy and the presentation of adult disease in childhood. The adult, late onset of childhood disease, however, taxes most neurologists, as does knowledge of the lexicon of congenital abnormalities. In our practice we commonly encounter persons with learning difficulties and cerebral palsy often without an informed understanding of the complexities that underlay such generic terminologies. Also the neuropsychiatric syndromes in childhood may well persist into or manifest in other ways in adult life. This supplement cannot hope to provide a comprehensive coverage of neuropaediatrics, a specialty in its own right. With the trainee’s needs in mind, and with the guiding hand of Chris Verity, we have selected topics that are probably not normally addressed in the average trainee’s programme in the hope that they will encourage a greater understanding.

Our route map will attempt to cover some of the areas where there is more conventional overlap with adult neurology, where familiar “adult” diseases present in the paediatric age …