Chapter Name: Hong Kong
Report By: H Leung

Publications:

Updated review: drug resistant epilepsy and presurgical evaluation of epilepsy surgery - Consensus statement by Hong Kong Epilepsy Society
TL Poon, C Ht Lui, I Chan, D Yw Sui
HKMJ 2018; Nov 27 doi: 10.12809/hkmj187285. [Epub ahead of print]

Following the publication of the first two consensus statements, the third one was published in 2018, under a subcommittee led by Dr TL Poon. The topic was refractory epilepsy/ presurgical evaluation of epilepsy. It was published by The Hong Kong Medical Journal.

Summary of Activities:

2018 has been a year of watchful duties and loyal service to our patients and professionals. We provided support to our fellow doctors, nurses, clinical psychologists, technicians and academics. We have given help to our community to increase the awareness of epilepsy in general.

Annual Scientific Meeting and Quarterly Scientific Meetings

There were three quarterly scientific meetings(QSM) and one annual scientific meeting(ASM) under the auspice of Hong Kong Epilepsy Society. The first QSM was delivered by Dr XL Zhu on the subject of deep brain stimulation for epilepsy. It was an interesting evening as Dr Zhu shared his clinical experience in this modality of surgical intervention. The second QSM was delivered by Dr Piter Lo (Radiologist), Dr Iris Chan (Clinical Psychologist) and Dr TL Poon (Neurosurgeon) on language mapping in presurgical evaluation of epilepsy, from perspectives of different specialties. Hitherto, the treatment of epilepsy with surgery cannot be accomplished without a reliable means of testing the eloquent area. The latest technologies and clinical psychological support were exemplified by them in their remarkable presentation. The third QSM was delivered by our honourable guest Dr Ching-Choi Lam, a member of the Executive Council, and also the Chairman of Elderly Commission in Hong Kong. An open forum was held during this occasion and many pieces of valuable opinion gathered in the process. What's more Dr Lam reflected on the various healthcare strategies that the government was contemplating, including that of a model of a case manager. The highlight of Dr Lam's talk was that any model of care with an embracing solution was usually the one that would be highly considered or appreciated by the government. Towards November, we came to the ASM, which was the essence of our academic activity on a yearly basis. Dr Gavin Winston from Queen's Square, London lectured us on the radiological techniques for presurgical evaluation, whereas Prof Wenjing Zhou from Beijing shared with us knowledge about thermocoagulation technique using SEEG.

Academic Study and sponsorship of conferences

We have sponsored Dr KW Fong from Queen Elizabeth Hospital to engage in an attachment with Prof Andrew Cole of Harvard Medical School. The underlying theme was to learn about presurgical evaluation and handling complex and difficult epilepsy cases. We sponsored several members to attend short courses/ meetings: 1. Summer School on Imaging in Epilepsy (SuSIE) (Marburg, Aug 2018), 2. 18th Asian Oceanian Epilepsy Congress (Indonesia, Jun 2018), 3. Seventh Cleveland Clinic Brain Mapping Workshop (Cleveland, September 2018), 4. "EEG in the first two years of life" (Cambridge, Apr 2018), 5. 13th European Congress of Epileptology (Vienna, 2018)

A number of ad-hoc meetings were co-organized by HKES. A webinar event was co-hosted with GSK on the treatment of drugs with experts from Saudi Arabia (Sep 2018). Two events were organized with UCB on drug treatment: one was delivered by Prof Michel Bulac (April 2018) and the other was the highlight of post-ECE (European Congress of Epileptology) ( Oct 2018) given by members who had attended the meeting. A Novartis co-hosted inter-hospital epilepsy surgery meeting was held in May 2018, with the aim of discussing interesting and difficult epilepsy surgical cases among professionals across the territory. An Eisai co-organized meeting took place in May 2018 with Prof Pierre Genton (France) and Prof Ziyi Chen (Guangzhou) as guest speakers.

Engagement with community

On 11th Feb 2018, we hosted a local event to be in line with the International Epilepsy Day (IED). This event was organized jointly among Hong Kong Brain Foundation, Hong Kong Neurological Society and Hong Kong Epilepsy Association. A special event, which was held in The I-bakery of the Government Building at Timar, marked the inception of our event. Our hosts of the day included TV hosts Marcus Kwok and Fong Kin-yee. The Hong Kong Epilepsy Association, a major patient group campaigning for epilepsy, has been working hand-in-hand with us. The event promoted the awareness of epilepsy in Hong Kong and it was the first of its kind in HK.

 

Challenges:

1. To promote research and teaching of epilepsy among young professionals
2. To sustain community engagement of epilepsy awareness

Future Plans:

1. More academic support for professionals
2. International Epilepsy Day

Officer Election Date: 22/1/19