Department of Pediatrics

Tsutomu TAKAHASHI, M.D. & Ph.D.

A Greeting from the Professor

The Department of Pediatrics, Akita University School of Medicine, was established in 1970 with Professor Ototaka Higashi, who described the first case of Chédiak-Higashi syndrome in 1954, as the first chairman of the Department. Then, the Department consisted only of four specialized clinical groups, neonatology, oncology, nephrology, and cardiology. Professor Goro Takada (1988) and Professor Tsutomu Takahashi (2007) later succeeded to the chairmanship and developed the Department into the present state. At present, the Department has 5 clinical and research groups covering neonatology, nephrology, hematology-oncology, cardiology, neurology, endocrinology, gastroenterology, inherited metabolic diseases, and genetics.

The department is playing a central and essential role in medical education and pediatric medical care in Akita Prefecture and in the northern region of Honshu Island, Japan, in general. In the field of research, the Department has achieved some prominent accomplishments, including artificial surfactant replacement therapy for RDS (Professor Fujiwara, 1980) and identification of the genes responsible for genetic diseases, such as Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease (1993), hyperglycinemia (1994), and primary carnitine deficiency (1999).

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