Basil Darras

Dr. Darras serves as an expert for the Department of Neurology for Boston Children's Hospital Precision Medicine Service. For more information about the Precision Medicine Service please visitbostonchildrens.org/precisionmed.

I focus in my practice on treating children with neuromuscular diseases, which present as problems of motor development and function.

I am Associate neurologist-in-Chief at Boston Children's Hospital and hold the Joseph J. Volpe Chair in Neurology at Harvard Medical School. I am the Chief of the division of clinical neurology in the Department of Neurology at the hospital. For 11 years, I ran the hospital's neurology residency training program and I was twice voted teacher of the year by neurology residents.

My special focus is in the care of children with neuromuscular conditions originating from inherited or acquired conditions of the motor unit. These include patients with complex muscle diseases like muscular dystrophies and congenital or metabolic myopathies, neuromuscular transmission defects, neuropathies, motor neuronopathies, and also inflammatory muscle or nerve conditions. Further, I see patients with general neurological problems such seizures when I attend on the inpatient neurology services.

Following medical school in Greece and residencies in pediatrics and child neurology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and Tufts Medical Center, respectively. I completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Yale in genetics, which gives me a unique lens through which I approach problems of childhood motor development.

When I was training in neurology, I gravitated toward neuromuscular cases. The fact that many have a genetic basis appealed to me. I felt that there was a higher probability of finding a treatment if we could understand the pathogenesis of the diseases.

在波士顿儿童医院，我很荣幸能参与两个创新的多学科临床计划。我指挥神经肌肉计划，该计划为神经肌肉疾病的儿童提供诊断评估和治疗服务，并且是该国同类疾病中的最大之一；以及脊柱肌肉萎缩（SMA）临床研究计划，该计划旨在改善SMA儿童的医疗护理，并发现这种破坏性运动神经元疾病的新疗法。

通过我的临床和研究经验以及医院的领导角色，我在国家和国际上都影响了儿科神经肌肉疾病领域的护理。