Specialty
Medecine Infantile, Epileptology
Profile
Physician Li-Tung Huang has served in Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital for nearly 25 years as a kind physician in the field of pediatric neurology. In addition to clinical work, he is also very enthusiastic about academic research regarding epilepsy treatment. He also leads physicians of pediatric medicine to take part in academic research and has established a Laboratory of Free Radicals to allow physicians of various fields to apply and integrate their strengths.
Epilepsy is a kind of chronic disorder of the brain’s nervous system that results from the irregular and repeated discharge of brain cells due to different causes. Many etiological factors can cause pediatric spasms, such as trauma, encephalitis, meningitis, lesions in the brain (e.g. brain tumor or cerebral hemorrhage), encephalopathy caused by poisoning or metabolic disorders, and electrolyte imbalance caused by pure fever, gastroenteritis, etc.
Whether general pediatric epileptics have to take regular medication depends on the frequency of epileptic attacks and a comprehensive diagnosis based on EEG. Some adult patients with infrequent attacks, which is defined as once every two or three years, do not necessarily need to take medication. However, for a pediatric patient, if he/she does not present any clinical symptoms, but an EEG indicates continuous irregular discharges, such a condition may still injure the patient’s brain cells, further affecting his/her cognitive and mental development. Therefore, whether a pediatric patient should take an antiepileptic requires much more prudent and careful consideration than that for an adult patient.
Dr. Huang has spared no efforts in his epilepsy research. In 1997, he began to follow Professor G. L. Holmes to conduct basic animal neuroscientific studies in a laboratory at Harvard Children's Hospital in the U.S. At that time, he was focused on studies related to infant epilepsy and its effect on mental development. Afterwards, he became committed to a series of studies on long-term learning capability after epileptic attacks in infant mice and the relevant treatment.Currently, his study mainly focuses on the correlations among prenatal stress, neonatal stress, and neonatal disease. He hopes to find mechanisms and treatments for diseases that would intensify under stress in terms of animal behavior science, histoneurology, and molecular neurobiology through in-depth discussions and investigations and make contributions to pediatric neurology in the future.