14th World Congress on Ultrasound in Obstetrics and Gynecology, 31 August–4 September, Stockholm, Sweden: presentations and awards

Abstract

It is for me a special pleasure and honor to introduce the Ian Donald Gold Medal Winner for 2004. Before I describe his achievements I’d like to tell you the history of this prestigious award and how it is selected. Around 1994 I became concerned that our Society might drift into the usual situation extant in most societies, where decisions on awards are made in smoke-filled rooms with a strong whiff of political compromise and favors for favors. We had already awarded the medal to legends such as Kratochwil and Hansmann but how could we devise a fair and honorable system of deciding who should get the medal? It was then that Karel Marsal who was seconded to the board from the International Perinatal Doppler Society came up with a truly brilliant idea, i.e. that the gold medal winners should vote for the recipient of the award by secret ballot. This meant that there could be no favors for favors for you can only get the medal once and there was a strong incentive for the gold medal committee to make their elite group as prestigious as possible. In other words, only the very best candidates would get the medal. So who is the 2004 gold medal winner? Well he’s male, about 50, aristocratic in demeanour, a cool dresser, good looking in a Yul Brynner kind of way, a Venezuelan who made his career in the United States of America. Yes, you’ve got it – it is Roberto Romero. Roberto was born in Maracaibo, Venezuela in 1951. He obtained his medical degree cum laude in the same city in 1974. His Professor realized his potential and arranged with Professor Nathan Case to take him into Yale University for training and he began his residency in 1976 at the age of 25. In 1980 he began his fellowship in maternal–fetal medicine at Yale under the directorship of John Hobbins whose benign and inspirational leadership ensured that his career would flourish. Almost immediately he was coauthor with Nick Kadar of one of the seminal studies of gynecological ultrasound, ‘Discriminating hCG zone: its use in the sonographic evaluation for ectopic pregnancy’. Over the next few years Nick and Roberto produced a series of classic studies on defining the ultrasound and biochemical parameters for the early diagnosis of ectopic pregnancy. In 1981 at the age of 31, he was appointed director of perinatal research at Yale University School of Medicine. When you realize that 6 years earlier he was a rookie resident from Venezuela this was an astonishing achievement and a tribute to his intellect and drive. Until 1986, when he became Associate Professor, he, as part of the Hobbins team, produced a series of papers on the ultrasound diagnosis of a variety of congenital abnormalities which included Roberto’s four classic papers on renal abnormalities. After 1986 things began to change. Suddenly his papers were focused on preterm labor and contained terms like cytokines, leukoteines, interleukin 6, prostaglandins, thromboxanes, mycoplasma, ureaplasma and TNF; there were human studies, animal studies and randomized studies on preterm labor, so that within a few years he had convinced us all that subclinical infection was the primary cause of preterm labor and much of infant morbidity. In these few years he had become the acknowledged international expert on all matters concerning preterm labor and one of the most prominent intellectual leaders in modern obstetrics. Also during this time he secured a series of NIH grants for his work on cytokines and preterm labor and then in 1994 he was awarded a large