On 5 March 2018, the Almazov Centre held the symposium with international participation Team Approach in Medical Care for Children and Adults with Hyperinsulinism.
The symposium was devoted to a major medical and social problem of managing patients with a severe, rare disease called congenital hyperinsulinism (CHI). CHI is characterized by the inappropriate secretion of insulin from the pancreas leading to severe hypoglycemia. Late diagnosis and inadequate therapy may result in severe organic brain damage and cause life-threatening consequences.
Modern treatment protocols for this disease include molecular genetic testing and imaging with 18F-DOPA-PET/CT, and the findings determine the tactics in each case: conservative therapy with drugs with insulinostatic effect or surgical treatment with intraoperative histological examination to ascertain the volume of pancreatic tissue to be resected.
Before 2017, some patients traveled overseas for treatment to complete the examination. Today, all necessary diagnostic and treatment procedures are performed at the Almazov Centre. In less than a year, the Centre has successfully examined and treated 27 children with CHI.
The goal of the symposium was to discuss the foreign and home experience in treating children with CHI, analyze the results, present the atypical clinical cases. This was achieved in close cooperation with the National Medical Research Centre for Endocrinology.
The symposium was attended by more than 100 doctors, including pediatric endocrinologists, pediatricians, neonatologists, pediatric surgeons, neurologists and other specialists from across Russia.
