Robert M. Shuman, MD, FAAN, is recognized by Continental Who's Who

PLACERVILLE, Calif., Dec. 21, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Robert M. Shuman, MD, FAAN, is recognized by Continental Who's Who as a Trusted Professional in NeuroDevelopmental Medicine.

Dr. Shuman was a Rockefeller Regents Scholar throughout his 1963 Baccalaureate in Experimental Psychology at Cornell University. He won special departmental honors in Experimental Psychology at the university and was a Goodrich Scholar and a Dean's Scholar at Stanford University School of Medicine. He graduated in 1968, after spending 6 months in the Pathology Department of Professor Thomas Symington at the University of Glasgow. He was mentored by faculty mentors at Stanford who helped him devise his post-graduate training program in pediatric neuropathology, a specialty which did not then exist. 

Dr. Shuman returned to the bedside in 1982-1984 for his third residency training program at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine. This residency was devoted to Neurology and Child Neurology with Dr. David Clark, a masterful practitioner of the art of the neurology history, neurology examination, and of neurology care. He then resumed his academic career in Pathology, Neuropathology, and Neurology in Oklahoma (vide supra). He is board-certified in Anatomic Pathology (Neuropathology), Neurology with special competence in Child Neurology, and in NeuroImaging. By 1990 Dr. Shuman had spent decades in clinical research in Pediatric Neuropathology. Now he wanted to touch the living. He returned to the bedside by founding CNI (vide supra). 

Dr. Shuman was influenced of his mother who was raised by a Christian Science Practitioner. She surrounded him with books from infancy on, many of them medical tomes which he began to read at an early age. According to the doctor, she shaped his identity as a healer in medicine and his awareness of the importance of literature as a repository of knowledge. Robert was cherished and loved throughout his secondary education, promoted, and rewarded by his teachers and community. 

Dr. Shuman has served as the president and chief executive officer of Child Neurology, Inc. since 1991. With more than 50 years of experience in pediatric pathology, pediatric neuropathology, pediatric neurology, and pediatric neuroimaging, he specializes in the treatment of pediatric epilepsy, neonatal strokes, cerebral palsies, metabolic disorders, congenital malformations, and developmental disorders. He notes that he is committed to the early recognition and interventions in neonatal and infant disorders. His practice of child neurology is constantly seeking ways to unleash and redirect the growth potential of the infant brain towards healing static injuries of the infant brain. 

Dr. Shuman was the Chairman of Neurology at the University of Oklahoma prior to founding CNI. He assumed this position at the request of the Dean of the School of Medicine. He was also the Vice Chairman of Pathology and the Director of Neuropathology and Anatomic Pathology at the University of Oklahoma before chairing neurology at Oklahoma. He was the Director of Neuropathology for the joint collaborative program in the Neurosciences between the University of Nebraska and Creighton University. Along with Dr. John Moossy, Director of Neuropathology, Dr. Shuman founded Pediatric Neuropathology at the University of Pittsburgh, combining the perinatal population of Magee Women's Hospital with the pediatric population of the Pittsburgh Children's Hospital.

These experiences led him to the University of Colorado residency in pediatrics under Professor C. Henry Kempe who popularized the issue of child abuse while providing a rigorously academic pediatric residency training program and a nationally renowned program in pediatric infectious diseases. As per "The Plan," Dr. Shuman went to the University of Washington for Pediatric Pathology with J. Bruce Beckwith, (JB). It was JB who recognized and described Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). At the age of 30, Dr. Shuman served as an extramural NIH research fellow in the Neuropathology Laboratory of Dr. Ellsworth C. Alvord, Jr. (Buster) at the University of Washington before chairing Neurology at Oklahoma. The NIH Fellowship was awarded specifically for the study of Pediatric or Developmental NeuroPathology. Dr. Alvord was the co-discoverer of Myelin Basic Protein and its use as the inciter of Experimental Allergic Encephalomyelitis, a model for the study of inflammatory diseases in the CNS. According to Dr. Shuman, Dr. Alvord was a wonderful mentor who was generous with his time, teaching, financial, and research resources. He had a fierce commitment to understanding neurobiological problems and demonstrated his enjoyment in doing so. Dr. Shuman forged his life-long collaborative partnership in Developmental Neuropathology with Dr. Richard W. Leech. It was in this neuropathology laboratory that Shuman, Leech, and Alvord made their discovery of pHisoHex Myelinopathy in premature human infants (vide infra). 

In addition to his responsibilities as a child neurobiologist and academic administrator, Dr. Shuman has co-authored multiple medical textbooks, including 1982 Neuropathology: A Summary for Students and 1985 Pediatric NeuroSonography. Throughout his career he has contributed articles to several professional journals such as Pediatrics, Archives of Neurology, Annals of Neurology, Journal of Child Neurology, The American Journal of Clinical Pathology, and Neurological Clinics of North America. Dr. Shuman earned widespread recognition for exposing the risks of neurotoxicity in applying the anti-staphylococcal soap pHisoHex to newborn infants on our Neonatal ICUs, and then replicating pHisoHex Myelinopathy in rat pups by washing them with pHisoHex just as human infants had been washed. He described the neuropathology of the amino-acidopathies and the natural history of ependymomas in childhood and created a model of neonatal Herpes hominis viral encephalitis in newborn pigs. The doctor described the occurrence, incidence, and predispositions to little strokes in the developing myelin of premature infants (PVL). He proved the frequency of and predispositions to large arterial strokes in term infants (CVA) and linked this autopsy work to the MRI documentation of the same perinatal strokes in a population of living children with Cerebral Palsy and epilepsy. He established both the KetoGenic Diet and the Vagal Nerve Stimulator in the practice community for the treatment of otherwise refractory Pediatric Epilepsy. 

Dr. Shuman has had numerous accomplishments and awards in recognition of his contributions to his field. He is proud of his discovery of pHisoHex's toxicity in premature infants, his documentation of perinatal strokes in pediatric epilepsy, the application of the ketogenic diet to treat epilepsy, and the use of vagal stimulation in the treatment of pediatric epilepsy. He is proud of the children with intractable epilepsy whom he cured with the intelligent use of trough blood levels of antiepileptics, of provocative and ambulatory EEGs, and the flexible use of therapeutic modalities. He has earned the Best Teacher Award from the University of Nebraska and a National Institutes of Health fellowship to study pediatric neuropathology with Buster Alvord at the University of Washington. He has been an active advocate for infants and children in the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program for the past 25 years, always striving to understand and explicate the pathogenesis of such injuries for the Court. He has nurtured a valuable professional network through his memberships in the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Association of Neuropathologists (AANP), the College of American Pathologists (CAP), the Child Neurology Society (CNS), and the American Academy of Neurology where he is a Fellow (AAN). 

In his spare time, he enjoys spending time with his family, developing and driving fast cars with his daughter, Val, and his son, Sky, photography and travels with his wife and friend of 60 years (Marcia), and meeting with his discussion group. Dr. Shuman honors the memory, dedication, skills, and generosity of his high school English teacher, Dr. David Manly, Ed.D. Dr. Shuman acknowledges the support of his mentors: Dr. James Gibson, PhD and Professor of Experimental Psychology at Cornell University College of Arts and Sciences, and Dr. Robert "Corky" Rosan, M.D., then an Assistant Professor of Pathology, Department of Pathology, Stanford University School of Medicine. He dedicates this recognition to the loving memories of Ellsworth C. Alvord, Jr., MD, Professor of NeuroPathology at the University of Washington ("Buster") and Richard W. Leech, Professor and Chairman of Pathology at the University of Oklahoma who has always been an irascible but insightful colleague. 

The doctor thanks his wife, Marcia, and their children, Sky and Val, for loving him, for allowing him to do his consuming and important work, and for being constants in his restless quest for medical goodness. He has made remarkable scholarly medical contributions to the understanding and care of child neurology disease, which have added to his joy and persistence in the practice of pediatric neurology. According to Dr. Shuman, he brings to the bedside his wealth of training and experience in the expression of and intervention with child neurology diseases. He maintains his empathy for the threats of childhood diseases, the stresses on parents and siblings, and the need to listen, which he attributes to his mother's influences. Dr. Shuman plans to continue researching and writing for the academic and legal literatures and will continue to partner with patients and caregivers to deliver high-quality, thoughtful, collegial, and current care.

Contact: Katherine Green, 516-825-5634, [email protected]

SOURCE Continental Who's Who