The fellowship at UIHC offers 1 year of clinical training which provides a strong education in diagnosis and treatment of adult and pediatric autoimmune and infectious neurological diseases for either academic or community-based practice careers. The fellow sees patients in both outpatient and inpatient settings.
Outpatient setting
- Fellow continuity of care clinics: staffed by one of the neuroimmunology faculty
- Electives: option to rotate through our state-of-the-art clinics and diagnostic services
- Neuro-ophthalmology clinic
- Rheumatology clinic
- Neuropathology rotation
- Neuroradiology rotation
Inpatient exposure
- We have established a “super-consult” system.
- Our inpatient neurology teams (general neurology, consults, stroke and pediatric neurology) will request consultation for complicated and rare neurological disorders
- Consults are staffed with one of the neuroimmunology faculty
- Patients are often seen back in the fellow’s continuity of care clinic, offering valuable longitudinal follow-up through the different phases of their illness
- Electives: option to rotate with our infectious diseases consultation team.
Patient and disease diversity
As the only academic tertiary care center in Iowa, UIHC is the destination for a diverse population of patients and diseases. Fellows manage patients from all over the Midwest with varying backgrounds. Fellows have exposure to a wide range of diseases, from “bread and butter” to the rarest “fascinomas” on a regular basis.
By extension, the fellow also develops skills to diagnose or manage other non-inflammatory diagnoses that may mimic immunological or infectious diseases such as CNS tumors and neoplasms (leptomeningeal carcinomatosis, melanomatosis, gliomatosis, primary CNS lymphoma, infiltrative gliomas), metabolic and toxic neurological syndromes (PRES, Wernicke's encephalopathy, central pontine myelinolysis, subacute combined degeneration from B12 and copper deficiency) and inherited leukodystrophies diagnosed in adults (CADASIL, retinal vasculopathy with cerebral leukoencephalopathy, mitochondrial complex I deficiency, etc.).
Diseases Managed
CNS demyelination
- Multiple sclerosis (and variants)
- NMOSD
- MOG associated disease
- Optic neuritis
- Transverse myelitis
- Acute demyelinating encephalomyelitis
- Other white matter diseases
Autoimmune Neurology
- Autoimmune encephalitis
- Autoimmune sensory ganglionopathy
- Autoimmune cerebellitis and brainstem syndromes
- Paraneoplastic neurological syndromes
- Opsoclonus myoclonus syndrome
- CAA-related inflammation
- Autoimmune epilepsy
Neuro-Rheumatology
- Neurosarcoidosis
- Neuro-Behçet
- ANCA-associated vasculitis
- Neuropsychiatric lupus
- Sjogren's syndrome neurological complications
- IgG4 related disease
- Primary CNS vasculitis
Neuroifectious diseases
- Infectious meningoencephalitis
- Neuro HIV
- Neurosyphilis
- Brain and spinal abscesses
- COVID-19 neurological complications (including TM, AE, and ANE)
- Progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy
- Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease