Afterword.
The failure at Chernobyl nuclear power station shook the world by uniqueness of the radiation doze to which the population of Russia, Ukraine and Byelorussia was exposed. An abrupt increase in occurrence of infantile thyroid cancer took place in these countries. A significant contribution to the early revelation of this pathology among the infantile population living in the regions suffered from the failure at Chernobyl nuclear power station was made by Vladimir Sergeyevich Parshin, Doctor of Medical Sciences, the specialist in ultrasound diagnostics of thyroid diseases.

Vladimir Sergeyevich Parshin graduated from Dnepropetrovsk Medical Institute. For a long time he was continuously engaged in X-ray and ultrasonic diagnostics of human internal diseases. Immediately after the failure at Chernobyl nuclear power station since May, 1986 he took part in various diagnostic expeditions that were engaged in medical examination of the population exposed to radioactive radiation. By now Parshin wrote  more than 80 scientific articles (10 of them were translated into English) and a monograph «Ultrasonic diagnostics of thyroid diseases». An enormous experience of work and analysis of the world literature allowed V.S. Parshin to create this excellent Atlas on ultrasonic goiter diagnostics that will become an actual support  for physicians and medical students.

Since 1991 there is a cooperation of Nagasaki University Medical School and Sasakava Foundation on the one hand and Medical Radiological Scientific Center of Russian Academy of Medical Sciences in Obninsk on the other hand. One of the forms of such cooperation is offering a job in the Atomic Disease Institute, Nagasaki University to the leading specialists of Obninsk MRSC. Since April,1999 Doctor of Medical Sciences V.S.Parshin has been working  in Nagasaki. At present the  thyroid ultrasonograms of children examined in Gomel and Semipalatinsk Regions are continuously received in Nagasaki through the satellite communication system. Being one of the best specialists in his field V.S.Parshin was engaged in expert evaluation of the received data and gave qualified decision in each case. At the same time  V.S.Parshin worked to create this book including thyroid echgrams and colored diagrams attached to them as well as analysis of its optical density and morphometry on the base of lateral tomography. The book is written in Russian, English and Latin. In the near future this Atlas will be done in electronic variant as well to become accessible to the world reader.

Publishing of this book is a result of  collaboration of Atomic Disease Institute, Nagasaki University and Obninsk MRSC and I hope that it will become a remarkable milestone in the history of interrelations of Russia and Japan. In future it is planned to establish new scientific projects aimed at elimination medical consequences of Chernobyl nuclear power station failure.
 

Shunichi Yamashita
Professor of Department.
of Preventive Medicine,
Atomic Disease Institute, 
Nagasaki University School of Medicine.