The Neurological Department of

The 2nd Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical College

The Neurological Department of the Second Affiliated Hospital of GZMC was founded in 1984. It is the most important department of the hospital. It is appraised as a key speciality by Guangdong Province Education Ministry, and takes up a very important position in the field of neurology in Guangdong.  The department consists of two inpatient wards, specialty outpatient, emergency, Epilepsy Center and Clinical Electrophysiological Diagnostic Center. The average annual number of outpatients for clinic and emergency amounts to 60,000 and that of inpatients amounts to 2500.

  The neurological wards provide 100 beds with modern monitoring and rescuing equipment, such as ECG monitor, breathing machine, multifunction monitoring machine, and blood glucose analysator, etc. The specialty outpatient sets up expert outpatients, including cerebral vascular diseases, epilepsy, pediatric nervous disease, infection of nervous system, Parkinson disease, dementia, and so on. It also sets up Clinical Difficult Case Consulting Center, serving for all kinds of unknown diagnosis and refractory cases of nervous system. The clinical electrophysiological diagnostic center is equipped with precise medical instruments, such as high quality multifunctional brain electrical activity mapping, electromyograph and evoked potentials equipment, colorful Doppler ultrasound equipment, Video-EEG, etc. It gives strong guarantee for clinical diagnosis.

  The department is a unity group with reasonable structure and skillful knowledge. At present, there are 11 professors and 7 vice-professors. Many complicatedly neurological diseases can be diagnosed and treated here. Professor Lu Xuefen, one of the most famous neurological experts in our country, works in this department and does many works for its development, who has pursued neurology for 50 years and enjoyed special bonus of The State Government.

  In the aspect of cerebral vascular diseases, the department opened green passage earliest for patients with cerebral infarction during super early period of 6h, and gives them thrombolytic treatment for more than ten years, and has devoted much to saving lives of patients and decreasing handicap rate. The Department has set up stroke unit to implement holistic nurse and early rehabilitation, and got satisfactory effects in giving unique selective brain hypothermia to patients with stroke. The leader of cerebral vascular diseases group is professor Xu’En, vice-director of the Neuroscience Institute of Guangzhou Medical College. She was responsible for establishing a spot of social prevention and control for CVD in Guzhen, Zhongshan City and it has become an example in China. In 1996, the department established the first epilepsy center in South China. More than 3000 patients（over 1000 new cases）got service here annularly. The leader of epilepsy group, Professor Liao Weiping, the director of the Neuroscience Institute, is the vice-president of China Association against Epilepsy. The pediatric neurological experts also have done excellent works in child mental retardation, tic, De La Tourrette Syndrome and Fragile-X syndrome etc. The leader of pediatric neurology group is Professor Yi Yonghong, the vice-director of neurological biochemistry group of Guangdong Neurology Academic Committee.

  In the aspect of neurological basic and clinical research, the department takes up a high position in Guangdong neurological academic field. The basic science research lab possess 3600 square meters and ownes a series of advanced equipments, such as confocal microscopy, patch clamp system and denaturing high performance liquid chromatography etc. There are 2 postdoctorals, 3 doctors, several lab assistants and over 10 graduate students. At present, basic research mainly focused on epilepsy, pediatric neurology and synaptic plasticity. The leader of epilepsy group was Professor Liao Weiping. The group is developing methods for genetic diagnosis of epilepsy. A new mutation in SCN1A has been found recently and the functional studying showed it maybe related to seizure aggravation by AEDs. There is a group studying the role of voltage-gated potassium ion channel and Kv interaction protein (KChIP) in pathogenesis of epilepsy. Fragile-X syndrome is a common heritable form of mental retardation resulting from the abnormality of FMRP. Special characteristic for Chinese children with Fragile-X syndrome have been reported by the pediatric neurology group. The mechanism of abnormalities in dendritic spine developing and plasticity in Fragile-X syndrome is being studied by using FMR-1 knockout mouse. Researches about the effect of antagonist of mGluR-1 on the abnormal development of dendritic spine is ongoing now.

  By now, the department has been granted 57 funds and projects by Guangdong Province Science Fund Committee, National Science Fund Committee, Guangdong Province Health Department, Guangdong Province Science and Technology Department, et al. More than 500 papers have been published in international or national journals or conferences. It does play an important role in medical education. Many text books has been published, such as “Audio-video textbook of Epilepsy”, “Neurological Inherited Disease”, “Diagnosis and Therapy for Thrombus Disease”, “Child Psychiatry”, “Clinical Practical Peadiatrics”.