French Society of Neonatology

Professor Daniel Unal died on May 3, 2021 at the age of 87

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After beginning his career in nephrology with Prof. Murisasco, he devoted himself to pediatrics at the Assistance Publique des Hôpitaux de Marseille.

Under the aegis of Pr Carcassonne and Bernard, in 1969 he created the pediatric resuscitation unit at the CHU Nord where he developed mechanical ventilation for children.

 In 1974, opened and directed the pediatric resuscitation unit of the CHU Timone children's hospital.

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He then dedicated his career mainly to neonatology by taking, in 1989, the responsibility of the neonatology department of the CHU Timone and the Belle de Mai maternity ward. From this date, he developed, in the public maternities of Marseille, the prophylactic application of continuous positive pressure from birth in order to prevent and treat early respiratory disorders in children born prematurely. Subsequently, he invested heavily in the dissemination of this care in various maternity wards in the city and region. This approach, which has now become a standard of care, was unrecognized at the time. In 1994, he inaugurated within the Neonatology department a medical resuscitation unit dedicated to newborns, the "Cassoute Resuscitation" in tribute to the Marseille pediatrician of the same name.

It develops interactions with the neonatology departments of different cities in the form of “DES-Day”: Grenoble (Pr Rambaud), Montpellier (Pr Bonnet) and Nice (Pr Boutte). It also takes part in the field training of maternity staff as part of the 1995-2000 perinatal plan.

 

He was a recognized teacher: he influenced several generations of paediatricians, who, many years later, still claim his training. In addition to exceptional medical knowledge, a constant concern to be as close as possible to physiology, the permanent will to avoid or limit potentially dangerous gestures, his probity and his intellectual humility commanded respect. His care approach based on intellectual work but above all the presence in the patient's bed will remain a model for all of us.

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Dr Valerie LACROZE

Neonatal Medicine

Marseilles

For the pediatric hospital of Tours, Mr Laugier was the bearer of a vision and a collective ambition. He thus strongly encouraged young paediatricians to train  in non-existent subspecialties.

He thus contributed to creating a real school of Pediatrics by training many students and helped several of them to access hospital or hospital-university status.

 

 

Mr Laugier was  President of the Medical Commission of the CHU from 1987 to 1995. He chaired the Conference of CME Presidents of the CHUs of France from 1992 to 1995.

 

Elected to the National Council of Universities, Mr Laugier exercised in 1995 the presidency of the pediatric section for 8 years. This function led him to meet young paediatricians who were candidates for a university position, many of whom are in this assembly today. Having become teachers, several colleagues have expressed their gratitude to Mr. Laugier for his wise advice, his impartiality and his benevolence.

 

 

Mr. Laugier held several other important positions. He was for 10 years (1995-2005) the president of the Association of French-speaking Pediatricians; in this function he was in contact with French-speaking colleagues in Europe, MO, Africa and Canada with whom he kept loyal ties 

 

After ceasing his hospital and university activities, Mr. Laugier was still driven by a desire to serve others. In 2005, he joined the Red Cross and became President of the Territorial Delegation. its action has been decisive in several areas: the Samu Social, the beneficiaries of the social grocery store, and the launch of humanitarian missions in Lebanon and Togo.

 

Mr Laugier will remain in our memories as a great gentleman of pediatrics, a man of action and conviction serving the general interest, efficient, rigorous, impartial, humane, benevolent, and warm.  We remember the moments of conviviality shared with him. He will be missed.

 

I would like to end this tribute by expressing to Professor Jean Laugier, on behalf of his students, friends and colleagues, our affectionate and grateful thanks. To his family our love and sympathy.

 

Professor E SALIBA

 

Pupil of Mr Laugier

Past president of the SFN

President European Association of Perinatal Medicine

Our friend and colleague Jean Lavaud, full-time hospital practitioner and medical manager of the pediatric SMUR of Necker (SAMU de Paris) until 2008, died suddenly on December 25, 2019.

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Jean Lavaud was a pediatrician-resuscitator and former head of the pediatric intensive care clinic for Pr Michel Cloup at the Necker Enfants Malades hospital (AP-HP) in Paris. He had created and animated the first pediatric SMUR of the SAMU of Paris from January 1980. It was on this same date that he had contributed to setting up the Inter-SMUR pediatric network of Ile de France, with the all the other existing pediatric SMUR teams in the region: Montreuil (SAMU 93, 1976), Clamart (SAMU 92, 1977), Argenteuil and Pontoise (SAMU 95) as well as Créteil (SAMU 94, 80s). The second pediatric SMUR in Paris, secondarily implanted in the Robert Debré hospital, completed the system in 1988.

 

We have lost a colleague and a friend. Many of us had known Jean and collaborated with him for 30 to 40 years, in Ile de France or elsewhere. Jean was a very active pioneer, both in the field of perinatal care, in particular the care of newborns in vital distress and neonatal transport (pediatric SMUR) as well as in the field of pediatric emergencies or prevention. accidental childhood pathologies. He was also in this cause for the safety of the children of this country a real whistleblower before the hour. 

 

He published throughout his career until 2008, with his team or with other teams in the Ile de France region, numerous articles, books and abstracts concerning these different aspects of neonatology and emergency pediatrics. He was in particular the initiator of our collective book entitled "Réanimation et transport pédiatriques" which was published by Masson in 1985 and then reissued several times until 2004.

 

He was an outstanding team leader, very dynamic and warm, a warm and open fellow traveler. An excellent teacher, he has trained and “coached” numerous pediatric CESs for years. It has also been heavily invested in the framework of national perinatal plans in the initial training of midwives, childcare nurses and pediatric interns as well as in the continuous training of nursing staff, throughout the country, even after taking his retirement. To do this, he tirelessly traveled the roads and took the train to the four corners of France or sometimes the plane for the overseas territories and departments.

 

We are very saddened.

 

Jean Louis Chabernaud

Pediatrician-resuscitator, former head of the pediatric SMUR of Clamart
Antoine-Béclère Hospital, AP-HP. Paris-Saclay University
Medical Advisor to the Delegation for International Relations (AP-HP) 
CNP of Pediatrics

Claudine AMIEL-TISON, great lady of French neonatology and internationally renowned personality, died on December 7, 2013 in Paris.

 

She leaves an exceptional scientific legacy at the end of a long and prolific career that has given rise to more than 150 articles, ten books and several chapters in the main reference works in neonatology and developmental neurology. After pediatric training supplemented by a one-year stay at Columbia University in New York, she began her first research work in 1962 in the departments and research units of the Baudelocque and Port-Royal maternity wards. She then became interested in modern techniques of resuscitation in the control of the respiratory pathology of the newborn; this work will constitute the starting point for a set of studies that it will carry out with the constant concern to improve the health, development and quality of life of children at risk of neurological sequelae.

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She quickly took part in numerous projects with collaborators from France and elsewhere, including, among others, studies in experimental psycholinguistics (with J Mehler of the CNRS), in neurophysiology (with AG Pettigrew, University of Sydney and JA Eyre, University of Newcastle), in perinatal epidemiology (with A Stewart, U.C. London), in anesthesiology (with S Shnider, University of California San Francisco and G Barrrier, CHU Necker) and in behavioral neurology (with C Njiokiktjien of Amsterdam). It is nevertheless his contribution to the design of the method of neurological evaluation of newborns and young children that will remain etched in the memory of several generations of neonatologists, pediatricians, neurologists, midwives and rehabilitation professionals. Having benefited from the teachings of Saint-Anne Dargassies and Ajuriguerra, both heirs of André Thomas, she continues in the same line by schematizing the stages of neurological maturation in premature babies and infants. Such a description is essential in order to then be able to identify the signs and symptoms associated with brain damage in very young children.

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However, their particular and changing character with the extremely rapid development of the first months of life poses certain challenges. It is by combining anatomophysiopathological and clinical data that she manages to define an original and coherent conceptual framework which will provide a solid theoretical basis for the three evaluation instruments 1-4 that she designs: the evaluation of maturation in premature, 3-5 neurological assessment at term and neurological assessment 4, 6-9 from 0 to 6 years.

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His patient analysis and his great rigor also allow him to specify groupings of neurocranial signs describing a real spectrum of severity of neuromotor abnormalities at term age as well as in the first two years of life. This spectrum, predictive of the long-term outcome of newborns at risk, provides essential information not only for organizing the follow-up and management of populations of newborns at risk, but also for giving perinatal teams feedback on the quality of their care. The last years of his life were mainly devoted to teaching this evaluation method and to supporting various interdisciplinary teams, both in Europe and in America and Asia, in their efforts to implement a systematic monitoring of children at risk of neurological sequelae. His teachings, of extraordinary clarity, have always been imbued with a deep respect for the audience and a sustained commitment to improving services for children with developmental problems and their families.

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Beyond her scientific heritage, Claudine Amiel-Tison will have bequeathed, by her example, a rare sense of effort and surpassing as well as boundless determination and great generosity.Through all of its activities, it will have been able to constitute a truly vibrant international community of practice which today shares the same feeling of recognition and the privilege of having known it not only for its exceptional scientific contribution, but also for its authenticity and the bonds of friendship forged over the years.

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Julie GOSSELIN, erg. Ph.D.
- Full Professor, School of Rehabilitation
- Faculty of Medicine, University of MontrealFrançoise LEBRUN, m.d.
- Pediatrician, hospital practitioner (Port-Royal)

References :

1. Amiel-Tison C (1968). Neurologic evaluation of the maturity in newborn infants. Archives of Diseases in Childhood, 43: 89-93.

2. Amiel-Tison C (2001). Clinical assessment of the infant nervous system. In Levene MI et al. (eds). Fetal and Neonatal Neurology and Neurosurgery. 3rd ed (pp.99-120). London: Churchill Livingstone.

3. Amiel-Tison C (2005). Perinatal Neurology, 3rd Edition. Paris: Mason.

4. Amiel-Tison C, Gosselin J (2010). Perinatal neurological pathology and its consequences. Paris: Masson-Elsevier.

5. Amiel-Tison C (2002). Update of the Amiel-Tison neurologic assessment for the term neonate or at 40 weeks corrected age. Pediatric Neurology, 27: 196-212.

6. Amiel-Tison C (1976). A method for neurologic evaluation within the first year of life. Current Problems in Pediatrics: 1-50.

7. Amiel-Tison C, Stewart A (1989). Follow-up studies during the first five years of life: a pervasive assessment of neurologic alfunction. Archives of Diseases in Childhood, 64: 496-502.

8. Amiel-Tison C, Gosselin J (1998). Neurological development from birth to 6 years: technical directory and evaluation grid. Montreal: Publications Department, CHUME Ste-Justine.

9. Gosselin J, Amiel-Tison C (2007). Neurological evaluation from birth to 6 years. 2nd edition. Montreal: Presses du CHUME Ste-Justine/ Paris: Masson.

Gilbert Huault died on August 28, 2013 at the age of 82.

 

This exceptional man leaves a considerable legacy to Resuscitation, Neonatology, Pediatrics, and to all those who worked with him.

 

Gilbert Huault was raised in a difficult climate conducive to hard work.

 

Anyone who sees him recognizes in him a doctor who takes no rest and demands unlimited devotion to the child from those around him. His way of teaching is to lead by example: time and energy cannot be counted when faced with a child in distress. Rigor, discipline, intransigence are the first words that come to mind. "Noblesse oblige" he said to those who dared to complain. His school is that of self-sacrifice, of self-sacrifice. He is available day and night, Saturday-Sunday, holidays or no holidays, on call or not. How difficult it was to meet the demands he imposed, how his collaborators suffered under the whip of his example, but how proud they were to count among his pupils and to deserve his trust. This rigor has been the founding pillar of all pediatric resuscitation.

 

The second word that characterizes him is humility. Huault teaches that all work is teamwork. He teaches his collaborators to know their limits and to appropriate merit only through collective work. The operation of its service is based on listening to everyone. This humility is so ingrained in him that he rejects all honours. Finally, the word humanist completes this picture. His life is based on an unwavering faith in man. Always attentive to the suffering of children, that of their families, of his medical and paramedical team, he conveys the message of rigor in work based on compassion towards others.

 

This love of neighbor is at the origin of one of his obsessions: you have to "have the homework corrected". We need to know what becomes of our children in the long term. His obsession is to make survive a patient whose life, and that of his family, will be without joy and built on misfortune. In a joke, he defines pediatric intensive care: “allowing the children entrusted to us to one day become a grandmother or a grandfather whose life will have been happy”.

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During the summer of 1963, a decisive turning point took shape: G Huault took charge of a newborn with umbilical tetanus. For the first time, a newborn is intubated and ventilated. The child recovers after 5 weeks of hard work. The step has been taken: he has just demonstrated that artificial ventilation can be used in toddlers. In 1964, Professor Thieffry offered him the responsibility of the resuscitation unit of his department at Saint Vincent de Paul. Huault will devote himself entirely to this task.

 

On the strength of his experience, he wants to share it in a fundamentally pragmatic spirit. Thus in 1977, the idea of writing a book with B Labrune was born. This book "Emergency Pediatrics" will become a reference book. Translated into several languages, it will be the essential companion for paediatricians, general practitioners and on-call interns.

 

Since his retirement in 1997, he continues to work every day at the university library. Here again he shows the way to the young students who rub shoulders with him. At over 80 years old, he is still involved in avant-garde battles such as the organization of family planning and the promotion of medicine for the poorest.

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Pr Denis DEVICTOR