Chrysostomos (Tomis) P. Panayiotopoulos

Abstract

I was privileged to meet Tomis when I was a registrar at St Thomas’ Hospital in 1992, fresh from early training at the National Hospital for Neurology, Queen Square. Tomis’ enthusiasm for his specialities, clinical neurophysiology and epileptology, was infectious. His personal charm was immediately apparent, which together with his smile and charming Greek accent gave him an air of approachability. He was invariably polite in the face of ignorance, and encouraged all around him by the strategy of talking as if they were much more knowledgeable that they were. Having said that, he was not always easy to understand – his thinking processes were different from those I had been trained to expect and respect in colleagues and academics. It took me a little time to grasp that his knowledge stemmed from his keen ability to observe, to pick out the important information from his personal observations, to record what he had seen and to collate his unique experience gleaned over years of clinical work. If you asked him a question, you rarely got a straight answer. His thinking was original, and not hidebound by the conventionalities of institutional neurology. Born on the island of Tinos in 1938, he studied in Greece and England. He was appointed Professor of Neurology at the University of Colorado and subsequently at the University of Riyadh. He was then appointed Consultant in Clinical Neurophysiology and Epilepsy at St Thomas’ Hospital, London. He was awarded the 2012 Excellence in Epilepsy Award by the British ILAE. He was a very private individual, preferring to avoid conferences and lecture tours, much to the frustration of his friends and colleagues. Despite his reticence to take the limelight he developed an enviable professional reputation for innovation, and was rapidly understood to be our leading light in the syndromic classification of the epilepsies. He was amongst the first to bring the concept of Juvenile Myoclonic Epilepsy (Janz’ syndrome) to the attention of British Neurologists and his careful correlation of clinical histories with his work on electroencephalography (including seminal work on fixation off sensitivity) and video electroencephalography facilitated his work defining the subtypes of genetic generalized epilepsies. He was a stickler for good technique in neurophysiological investigation. He published seminal papers on occipital epilepsy and migraine, on benign childhood epilepsies and several landmark publications, notably the Clinical Guide to Epileptic Syndromes and their Treatment (Springer, 2010). His greatest professional achievement must be the naming of a syndrome after him, that of a benign childhood epilepsy characterized by often prolonged seizures with prominent autonomic symptoms, ictal vomiting and characteristic EEG features. The promotion of his ideas changed the face of epileptology in the UK. As well as developing an international reputation in the field of epilepsies, Tomis was also an accomplished neurophysiologist. He was the first to describe F chronodispersion (the scatter of latencies of consecutive f waves) and F tacheodispersion (the distribution of conduction velocities of nerve fibres derived from measurements of consecutive f-waves), which are invaluable neurophysiological techniques in the assessment of neuropathies. I helped Tomis to edit a few of his papers. His writing style was direct but what he wrote often was difficult for me to interpret and I often faltered in my attempts to understand his thoughts and words. He always remained good humoured and praised of my efforts. He delighted in an apposite classical quotation to emphasize a point, and took great pleasure in the English language. He leaves behind his beloved wife, Thalia, with whom he had many fruitful discussions that inspired her to develop psychological method to help people with epilepsies. He dedicated his Clinical Guide ‘To my wife Thalia because she is a beautiful woman, my muse, the flower, the smile and the angel in my life’. They had two children, Sophia and Paris and five adored grandchildren. He was an eminent man, generous and loyal to his friends, colleagues and family. He is greatly missed.