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Learning outcomes

Within the integrated course of Pediatrics, Child Neurology and Psychiatry (CNP) represents a distinct discipline, whose foundations have to be introduced to the medical students. Major goals of the course are to provide students with principles of neuropsychiatric development from birth to childhood and to adolescence, and outline the major symptoms, which characterize the abnormal development and the neuropsychiatric disorders in childhood and adolescence. Major focus of the course is to describe and characterize the main clinical symptoms related to both neurological diseases and neurodevelopmental disorders, and outline the pathophysiology of clinical manifestations; principles of clinical and diagnostic assessment will be outlined. Major chapters of child psychiatry will be also mentioned. Students will be taught to get familiar with the assessment tools of the discipline, related to both clinical and diagnostic (neurophysiology, neuroradiology, biochemistry, molecular genetics, etc) evaluations. Principles of treatment will be described, and the fast changes and improvement of drug treatment will be outlined. Attainment of communication skills during the diagnostic procedure, at the diagnosis, or even during the long-term follow-up which several, chronic neuropsychiatric disorders of childhood require will be also outlined. Medical students are entitled to become aware of the influences that family, school, socio-economic status, external relationship can produce on “developmental trajectories” of children; likewise negative effects of the abovementioned factors can be reflected on clinical manifestations (which can be misdiagnosed as disease symptoms), on abnormal behaviour, on learning abilities, on the emotional frame of children and adolescents, and which cannot be necessarily ascribed to a disease condition. Final goal of the course is provide students with the tools to recognize the specificity of symptoms related to a child neuropsychiatric conditions, before diagnosis being confirmed by targeted CNP consultations.

Program

Early Development of Children: onset of functions (motor, language, emotion development) and their evolution; chronology of development and assessment; the role of environment and development trajectories;

Late Development of Children: from school age to adolescence: cognition and its disturbances; psychopathological issues;

Neurodevelopmental Disorders (including Autism Spectrum Disorders, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Tourette sydnrome);

Epilepsy and Related Disorders: seizure semeiology; differential ages of onset; principles of nosography;

Meningitis, Encephalitis, Inflammatory Diseases of CNS and PNS in Childhood;

Neuromuscular Disorders in Childhood;

Neurodegenerative Disorders of Childhood Onset;

Headache; psychosomatic manifestations; sleep disturbances.

Examination Methods

Oral Examination.
Presentation of a topic by the student: he will freely choose which topic to discuss among those taught during the course. That will be followed by a brief discussion led by the examiner on a related issue