Today, family doctors are seeing an increasing number of elderly patients with cognitive decline. This talk will focus on how to screen for possible dementia and when to refer to specialists, and how the management of dementia patients should be a collaborative effort of the GP and specialist.
A routine MRI Brain is usually not very informative and only excludes diseases such as tumors and strokes. Brain Volumetry, an advanced imaging technique using Artificial Intelligence (AI) that provides more insight into disease biomarkers of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementia (ADRD), will also be discussed.
Dr. Kua Ee Heok
Psychiatrist
Professor Kua Ee Heok is the Tan Geok Yin Professor in Psychiatry and Neuroscience at National University of Singapore (NUS), Emeritus Consultant at National University Hospital and Consultant Psychiatrist at Mind Care Clinic, Farrer Park Medical Centre.
Trained as a doctor at the University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, he received psychiatry training at Oxford and geriatric psychiatry at Harvard.
He is the former Head of Psychological Medicine at NUS, and former CEO and Medical Director at the Institute of Mental Health.
A member of the WHO team for the Global Study of Dementia, he is the first Singapore doctor invited by the United Nations in New York to speak in a world forum on ‘Depression – the Hidden Illness’.
He has published 308 research papers and 27 books on psychiatry, addiction and ageing. His novel ‘Listening to Letter from America’, is used in a module on anthropology at Harvard University. He is Editor-in-Chief (with Norman Sartorius) of the 7-volume series ‘Mental Health and Illness Worldwide’.
Professor Kua Ee Heok's specialty interest is psychological disorders in old age.
Dr. Santhosh Raj
Diagnostic Radiologist
Dr. Santhosh Raj is a Consultant Radiologist with subspecialty in Neuroradiology & Neurointervention at Farrer Park Hospital. He obtained his Fellowship of the Royal College of Radiologists (U.K.) in 2008 and completed the Advanced Specialist Training (AST) in Radiology administered by the Singapore Specialist Accreditation Board. In 2015, Dr. Santhosh was awarded the SingHealth Health Manpower Development Program fellowship and underwent training in neurointervention at the National Institute of Clinical Neurosciences in Budapest, Hungary.
Before private practice, Dr. Santhosh was the Deputy Director of Vascular and Interventional Radiology at Singapore General Hospital (SGH). He was part of the Scientific Advisory Board for the 14th Congress of The World Federation of Interventional and Therapeutic Neuroradiology (WFITN) 2017. He was also the Chair of the 2nd Interventional Neuroradiology Workshop organized by the National Neuroscience Institute, Singapore in 2016. Dr. Santhosh was also co-appointed Adjunct Assistant Professor with DUKE-NUS and Clinical Lecturer with the National University Hospital’s Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine. He is currently Visiting Consultant at Singapore General Hospital (SGH) and KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital (KKH).
During his time in public service, Dr. Santhosh was actively involved in developing acute stroke intervention and neurointervention services. He also served on the national neurointervention on-call roster, covering the National Neuroscience Institute (NNI) and National University Hospital (NUH). He has a particular interest in neurovascular imaging, which included the development of MRI Vessel Wall Imaging and the set up of a dedicated CT Vascular Imaging protocol for acute stroke in SGH.
Apart from clinical work, Dr. Santhosh also has a keen interest in imaging informatics and artificial intelligence. In recent years, he has actively devoted his time to the clinical adoption of artificial intelligence, primarily in the field of neuroradiology. He has been an advocate in using Quantitative MRI (qMRI) on the brain using Automated Segmentation to detect early imaging features of neurodegenerative diseases such as dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy, and traumatic brain injury. He was previously Vice-Chair, Enterprise Imaging Committee of the Singapore eHealth Innovations Summit 2016.
Dr. Santhosh has presented extensively in meetings and conferences both locally and internationally. He also has a special interest in education. He organized the first Interventional Neurovascular Course for Nurses and the Neurovascular CT Angiography Hands-On Workshop for residents in SGH. He is a member of the American Society of Neuroradiology and the World Federation of Therapeutic and Interventional Neuroradiology.
Dr. Santhosh's specialty interest is neurovascular imaging, neurointervention, acute stroke intervention, neurodegenerative imaging, quantitative MRI (qMRI), imaging informatics and artificial intelligence.