Bulletin Number Two 1985

Professor C. Metreweli Professor of Diagnostic Radiology and Organ Imaging Professor Constantine Metreweli studied natural sciences and physical anthropology in Cambridge, then went on to clinical medical studies at Oxford University. From 1968 to 1973, he practised General Surgery, General Medicine, Intensive Care, Paediatrics and Neonatology in several hospitals in the South of England. He finally chose to specialize in Radiology. In this, Dr. Metreweli was trained in the Hammersmith Hospital Royal Postgraduate Medical School under Professor Robert Steiner. At the Hammersmith, he developed a particular interest in ultrasound diagnosis and subsequently published one of the early textbooks on the subject. After obtaining his Fellowship of the Royal College of Radiologists, Professor Metreweli joined The Royal Free Hospital, well-known for its Liver Unit. In 1978 ， he was offered the first consultant appointment as Paediatric Radiologist at the Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street, London where he helped pioneer the application of ultrasound diagnosis i n childhood diseases. This led to his other publications on the use of ultrasound in paediatric diagnosis and extensive lecturing around the world on this, which was new at that time. In 1982, the lure of the desert took him to Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, where he gained first-hand experience of the significant differences in diseases and attitudes to disease in a different ethnic population. From the solitude of the desert, Dr. Metreweli came to the ultimate gregariousness of Hong Kong to take up the Chair in Diagnostic Radiology and Organ Imaging. Ultrasound diagnosis has much to offer to medical care. It is safe, kind, rapid, very inexpensive and ideal for many of the common diseases found in Hong Kong and China. Its major drawback is that it is 'expensive' in terms of the time to train radiologists and clinicians to use and understand it. Professor Metreweli's dream is to establish a Department capable of utilizing, demonstrating and teaching the use of this amazing diagnostic modality not only to the staff of the Medical Faculty of the University and the medical profession o f Hong Kong but hopefully to radiologists and clinicians of the medical schools in The People's Republic of China, where the benefits to the Chinese population could be immeasurable. Tasks Ahead Department of Clinical Oncology Clinical Oncology is the non-surgical management o f cancer and thus includes both Radiotherapy and Cancer Chemotherapy. A Clinical Oncology Department should at once provide a first-class service for patients with malignant disease and also conduct both clinical and laboratory research in an endeavour to produce a higher rate of tumour cure. There have been many exciting developments in Oncology in the past ten to twenty years. Despite the fact that one in five persons in the Western world dies of cancer, many medical schools have inexplicably regarded the subject as too specialized. Thus, there is a tendency for even the very best general practitioners to be unaware of the potential of cure or good palliation in certain cancers. For example in Radiotherapy, a major advance in Hong Kong has been an excellent cure rate in carcinoma of the nasopharynx, a disease common in the Southern Chinese. Unfortunately owing to inadequate knowledge i n the general public of the advantage of early treatment, some cases come rather late. Also in cancer of the cervix uteri and early laryngeal cancer excellent cure rates are obtained. As regards Chemotherapy, tremendous advances have been made in the management of acute lymphatic leukaemia in children and in testicular carcinoma which, from being usually lethal only fifteen years ago, have gone to an overall seventy to eighty percent 8 RECENT DEVELOPMENTS