NEWS AND VIEWS: Radiologists foster cooperation with Ukraine (04/13/97)

NEWS AND VIEWS: Radiologists foster cooperation with Ukraine

by Adrian Baranetsky M.D.

CHICAGO - The annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA), a gathering of more than 70,000 professionals in the radiology industry is the world's largest medical convention. North American radiologists medical physicists and industry executives of Ukrainian descent have annually met at this convention, most recently in Chicago in December 1996, drawn together by their common heritage and professional interests.

In 1992, they organized themselves into a non-profit association, the Friends of Radiology in Ukraine (FRU), to foster closer fellowship and cooperation with imaging specialists and allied health scientists in newly independent Ukraine.

In 1990, radiologists in Ukraine had organized themselves into a 5,000-member national society, the Association of Radiologists in Ukraine (ARU), and thus cooperative educational activities with Ukraine were made possible.

Since Ukraine's independence in 1991, officers and individual members of the ARU have been coming to the annual meetings of the RSNA and have made it a practice to hold their annual meetings with their Western counterparts. As a result of crosscultural and scientific networking with colleagues in Ukraine, the number of interested professionals in the FRU has grown to approximately 300 in the U.S., Canada, Australia, Europe and Argentina.

Groundwork for networking between the ARU and the FRU was laid down at the 1990 Congress of the World Federation of Ukrainian Medical Associations (WFUMA) held in Ukraine, where North American physicians first met with their Ukrainian colleagues.

Leo Mostowych, M.D., chairman emeritus of radiology at the Veterans Administration Hospital, Lexington, Ky., made the initial contact for the FRU. He has continued to serve as the liaison with the ARU.

After several planning sessions, in July 1993 in Kyiv a written plan was set down for a long-term interactive program between the FRU and the ARU.

One of the proposals was to update Ukraine's medical radiology literature database at the 14 medical libraries in Ukraine that are affiliated with medical schools. Complimentary subscriptions to the English-language radiology journals Radiology and the American Journal of Roentgenology are being donated by the publishers to these medical libraries. The RSNA and the European Association of Radiologists (EAR) have sent hundreds of textbooks, videotapes, slides and audiovisual equipment to the ARU, and to institutes of post-graduate medical education in Kyiv, Kharkiv and Zaporizhia. Other major contributors of educational material have been the Radiology Outreach Foundation (San Francisco) and the NICER Institute (Norway). Officers of the Indian Radiological and Imaging Association based in New Delhi have attended FRU meetings at the RSNA to offer support to the ARU.

Another project was the publication of a radiology dictionary. In 1995 a trilingual (Ukrainian-English-Russian), 12,000-word reference work, Radiological Terminology, was published.

Since very few scientific periodicals are published in Ukrainian, a crucial project was to establish the quarterly Ukrainian Journal of Radiology (UJR) in 1993. A major contribution towards this publishing goal was the recent donation by the WFUMA of a digital printing system. Additional donations to complete the system were provided by the Soros Foundation and by individual contributors.

Now, with the medical printing press installed, plans are under way to publish Ukrainian-language textbooks in radiology and, eventually, a comprehensive Ukrainian medical dictionary based on a worldwide standard.

Another goal was to establish post-graduate programs or courses that would expose the formerly isolated Ukrainian radiology community to Western medical methodologies. The European Association of Radiologists has established the European Seminars in Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology (ESDIR) and Halley's Project, intensive two-week refresher courses by Western European faculty traveling through various Eastern European cities. There are plans are to have FRU members join European colleagues on the lecture circuit in Ukraine. The ARU has scheduled a five-year biannual conference schedule throughout various regions of Ukraine culminating with the second congress of the Association of Radiologists in Ukraine in the year 2000.

The Friends of Radiology in Ukraine held a refresher course on advanced imaging techniques at the Lviv Medical School in conjunction with the May 1996 ARU meeting. The symposium, whose official language was Ukrainian, was attended by approximately 250 individuals, including senior medical students and practicing physicians. The lectures were videotaped, and copies of the lectures will be sent to the medical schools and several clinics in Ukraine. The FRU will hold a subspecialty refresher course at the ARU conference in Kharkiv and Lviv this September.

Discussions were initiated on the need to establish precise guidelines and standards that govern radiology training in Ukraine to bring training into line with that in the West. At present, radiology training (residency) in Ukraine is a one-year program. According to the president of the ARU, Prof. Yakov S. Babiy, M.D., who also is the chief radiologist at the Ministry of Health, given Ukraine's current political and economic situation, it will take 10 to 15 years for training standards to approximate those in the West. The president of the FRU, Paul Capp, M.D., is the director of the American Board of Radiology (ABR), which has actively provided assistance with written U.S. guidelines and standards in radiology residency training, examination and certification to their Ukrainian colleagues.

Other notable efforts in have included an East European Externship Program in Ultrasonography at Thomas Jefferson Medical University (Philadelphia) underwritten by the Soros Foundation. Two years ago, a contingent of young radiologists from Ukraine attended the several-month course, with a hands-on workshop within a clinical setting. An extensive Ukrainian-language video teaching library in ultrasound was developed, along with an ongoing exchange program with Lviv radiologists.

A second teaching file, based on regular x-ray films, was developed in the Ukrainian language for the Institute of Post-Graduate Medical Education in Kyiv. This program was financially supported by the Radiology Outreach Foundation and developed at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ).

Dr. Myron Pozniak, professor of radiology at the University of Wisconsin Medical School, has traveled to Ternopil, Ukraine, several times to establish an ultrasound clinic in that city. He was instrumental in having the Acuson Corp. donate several ultrasound units to the radiologists. Dr. Pozniak not only helped set up the instruments, but stayed on to train the radiologists in their use.

The RSNA's Committee for International Radiology Education recognized Ukraine's need and selected Larissa Bilaniuk, M.D., professor of radiology at the University of Pennsylvania, as RSNA International Visiting Professor to Ukraine in 1996. She spent three months lecturing in Ukrainian on neuroradiology to radiologists in Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Odesa and Kyiv.

Future plans include participation in The Ukraine Breast Cancer Assistance Program, funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), with the Ministry of Health of Ukraine. A program to screen, diagnose and treat breast cancer in Ukraine, particularly the victims of the 1986 nuclear disaster at Chornobyl, it coincides with the recent announcement by the German government that it will provide 350 mammograms (x-ray) units to be distributed throughout Ukraine.

For further information on FRU activities, or to make a donation, please contact: M. Paul Capp, M.D., University Medical Center, Department of Radiology, P.O. Box 245067, Tucson, AZ 85724-5067; fax, (520) 626-2643.

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