Neurological research at Hospital Universitario Marqués de Valdecilla: a personal and retrospective analysis (1974-2021)

J. Berciano
Neurosciences and History 2023;11(3):97-143

Type of article: REVIEW

AUTHOR

J. Berciano
Emeritus professor ad honorem, Universidad de Cantabria; former head of the Department of Neurology, Hospital Universitario Marqués de Valdecilla (IDIVAL), and Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red de Enfermedades Neurodegenerativas (CIBERNED), Santander, Spain.

ABSTRACT

Introduction. Modern clinical neurology started by the mid-1960s, coinciding with the launch of a post-graduate programme at Clínica Puerta de Hierro in Madrid, where the author specialised between 1969 and 1973.

Objectives. I chronologically analyse my pre-graduate training, the creation and development of Clínica Puerta de Hierro, my post-graduate training at that centre, and my research career at Hospital Universitario Marqués de Valdecilla between 1974 and 2021.

Development. The excellent pregraduate neuroanatomical instruction was decisive in my decision to specialise in neurology at Clínica Puerta de Hierro, a pioneering centre in post-graduate training within the Spanish social security system. My research activity has fundamentally focused on the study of ataxia, Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, Guillain-Barré syndrome, and various syndromes involving unknown or rare neurological features.

Conclusion. My career has spanned almost five decades of uninterrupted neurological research, largely derived from my solid post-graduate training and the inestimable help of my colleagues. This research activity soon garnered international recognition, which has unquestionably served as great encouragement.

KEYWORDS

Ataxia, botulism, Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, cheiro-oral syndrome, Chiari malformation, Clínica Puerta de Hierro, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, epidemiology, Friedreich ataxia, Guillain-Barré syndrome, hereditary spastic paraplegia, Hospital Universitario Marqués de Valdecilla, Marie ataxia, motor neuron disease, moyamoya syndrome, multiple sclerosis, neurological research, occipital dysplasia, olivopontocerebellar atrophy, posterior column ataxia-retinitis pigmentosa syndrome, post-graduate training, SCA, Sneddon syndrome, striatonigral degeneration, syringomyelia, young stroke.

Neurosciences and History 2023;11(3):97-143