Epilepsy Pioneers including their Short Biography in Cyprus from Past to Present and Current Educational Programs in Cyprus

摘要

?Buy Article?Permissions and ReprintsSavvas Symeon PapacostasComprehensive epilepsy centers begun sprouting around the world, mainly in academic settings, toward the latter part of the 20th century, a period during which I was engaged in my tertiary education and subsequent specialty training in neurology. My own journey toward Epileptology was by no means a straightforward one and neither was my decision to study medicine. I was born in Nicosia, Cyprus, an island in the Mediterranean region, where I received my early education having attended the Heleneion Elementary School and the Pancyprian Gymnasiun (High School). Following high school graduation in 1973, I had to serve an obligatory 2-year service in the military prior to continuing on with my education. As there were no universities in Cyprus at that time, people typically went to study in Greece or England and, to a lesser extent, other countries as well. Several universities have since been established. I did not follow that typical path but went instead to the United States to study biology and then to graduate school to obtain a Master's degree in Medical Anthropology. It was during that time when my interest in medicine and cross-cultural expressions of mental illness begun to develop. With that in mind, I decided to go into medicine, hoping to eventually specialize in psychiatry and pursue my academic interests further. So, I completed my medical education at Ohio University, followed by a residency in psychiatry at the University of Rochester in New York. It was during this time that I became interested in the neurophysiology of behavior and its anatomic substrates and the field of epilepsy appealed to me as it enabled me to combine my previous interests and training; therefore, I combined psychiatry and neurology and, subsequently, completed my fellowship in clinical neurophysiology and epileptology at Columbia University in New York.