We commemorate the life of A/Prof Loong Si Chin – who passed on Vesak Day, 15 May 2022 – a foremost physician in clinical neurology, beloved doctor, and dedicated teacher in neurology to countless medical students and neuroscience graduates.
Dr Loong was born in Seremban, Malaysia in 1936 and studied medicine in Singapore after the war. He worked as a medical officer at the Institute of Mental Health (then known as Woodbridge Hospital), before going to Sydney, Australia to train in neurology under Prof James W Lance.
Returning here, he worked under Prof Seah Cheng Siang at Singapore General Hospital, later at Toa Payoh Hospital (then known as Thomson Road Hospital), and then at Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH).
Being grounded in the basics of neurophysiology, he was able to teach clinical neurology as a science and not as a mysterious art with mystical signs and reflexes. This brought in a new era of neurology teaching for many of us, despite the fact that there were no CT scans until 1977 or MRIs until 1980 in Singapore.
An excellent teacher, Dr Loong enabled us to elicit a good history, to conduct a sound neurological examination, to reach a clinical diagnosis and work with an appropriate view of management. Totally devoted to teaching, he would take extra hours after work to teach family physicians and neurology residents on diseases and lesions in the central nervous system in a clear and simple way.
I remember two such sessions:
- Lessons in gait disorders where Dr Loong would mimic the walk of a hemiplegic patient, the shuffling gait of Parkinson's disease, the waddling gait of muscle disorders, that of gait dyspraxia as with hydrocephalic patients, and others.
- 15 minutes in cerebellar disease, where he would differentiate (a) midline vermis lesions with truncal ataxia from (b) lateral cerebellar or neo-cerebellar lesions with its dysmetria and past-pointing signs.
Besides being a role model in teaching, Dr Loong was also an extremely caring and courageous physician. Once, in the early 1970s, a hospitalised medical colleague developed "paraesthesia" in some limbs and some respiratory irregularities after recovering from treatment of a subdural haemorrhage. Undeterred, Dr Loong and a few of us unscrewed the quarter-ton electromyography machine from the walls of the ground floor office of TTSH and hauled it up on a Sunday to the third floor ICU despite objections from the head of department. Luckily, we were proven right that the patient had developed Guillain-Barre syndrome. Otherwise, in those days, our careers could have been at risk.
When the government established the National Neuroscience Institute (NNI) in 1999, Dr Loong was one of its founding board members. He continued to serve on the board for some time and helped steer its development into sub-specialisations and basic research along with the founding director, Dr Richard Johnson, from John Hopkins University.
Besides clinical teaching, Dr Loong published important papers in the field of electrophysiology, especially in carpal tunnel syndrome. I remember his delight on a recently published paper in Neurology Asia with A/Prof T Umapathi of the NNI on abnormal hyperreflexia of finger jerks, an extremely simple yet invaluable sign of cervical myelopathy.
Dr Loong also showed us what a devoted family man could be. His wife and muse Liew Ping has received a flower every week since their courting days, and he never missed an annual trip back to Malaysia during the Qing Ming festival to pay respects to his parents' tombs.
Finally, even late in private practice, Dr Loong still continued his faithful two half-day teaching sessions at the NNI, only stopping when ill health struck.
Dr Loong's passing signifies the passing of an era. Let us hope that some of us will follow in his footsteps and emulate his lasting, significant legacy.
A/Prof Loong Si Chin was a recipient of the SMA Merit Award in 2015.