Mahmoud Ragai Elmeligy, Doria Salem
Faculty of medicine, Cairo University

Radiology was introduced as part of medicine in Egypt since about 80 years and investigation in neurology at this time was confined to plain Films for the skull and vertebrae.

By early fifties neuroradiology was started by neurol-ogists and neuro-surgeons at the operating theaters of neuro-surgeons, and that was for myelography (with positive and negative contrasts), carotid angiography, encephalography and sometimes vetriculography. At this time myelography was usually helped by anaethesiologists due to their experience in spinal anaethesia.

At early sixties the radiologists were starting to take over this task and had to fight for that. It was started at the main military hospital at Cairo as at this time they had more facilities. However within short time the radiology department at faculty of medicine, Cairo University as a the mother and leading university followed the same steps and paved the way to other universities and hospital to follow the same way. It was also for doing myelography, carotid angiography, encephalography and some cases of ventricu-lography. So the radiologists gradually became the only responsible for these techniques and mastering it.

Then at 1979, radiology department, faculty of medicine, Cairo University installed the first C.T. scanner in Egypt and whole region making good achievement in neu-rology (diagnosis and therapy) and put an end to ventricu-lography. And with introduction of DVI, carotid angiogra-phy was stopped and replaced by the transfemoral route. It was opened for training of many radiologists for use of C.T. which became an essential tool in any radiology dept. reaching now about 500 machines in Egypt.

On 1989 again radiology dept. at Cairo University got the first MR machine in Egypt and area where it was a focus for training many of the radiologists at the area knowing how to apply it, which add more in solving many problems and stopped nearly all angiographic examinations, with much more achievement in spinal surgery together with bone and joint lesions. So in Egypt now there are about 100 MR machines.

As a result many radiologists became interested in neuroradiology and good number -practiced interventional neuroradiology. Beside that all radiologists now have good idea about neuroradiology with use of C.T. and MR, where many scientific papers were published in this field in addition to theses either for master or doctorate degrees done in the field of neuroradiology.

(*) from “A History of Neuroradiology (1895-2002), E.A. Cabanis and MT Iba-Zizen Editors, Paris, 2002, pages 353-354, modified (published during the XVIIth symposium Neuroradiologicum, Luc Picard, President, Paris, France, August 18-24, 2002).