About this event

  • Date and time Tue 26 Jan 2021 from 6:00pm to 8:00pm
  • Location Online
  • Organised by Clinical Neurosciences

This webinar brings together experienced clinicians that will discuss the issue of people with epilepsy who drink too much. This patient group attend emergency departments repeatedly, have poor cognitive, seizure, and mortality outcomes, and are difficult to engage. Despite neurologists being frequently asked to see them as inpatients, there is little academic discussion of their management.

Elizabeth Galiza, Epileptologist at St George's, will discuss the complexities of alcohol, seizures and epilepsy treatments. Yvonne Langan, who has been a champion in SUDEP research in Dublin, will talk to us about this and in particular how alcohol plays into the mortality rates in this group. Then Killian Welch, who works as a neuropsychiatrist in Edinburgh, will discuss how we can manage this difficult group of patients at the interface of neurology and psychiatry services.

Delegates will gain knowledge of:

  • How alcohol impacts on seizure threshold and the development of epilepsy
  • Interactions and choices of medications for epilepsy in these patients
  • The morbidities and mortality associated with alcohol use in epilepsy
  • What treatment options are available and might be developed in the future

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We would like to thank our sponsor Arvelle Therapeutics for their support of this webinar.

Please note that the scientific programme and content has not been influenced in any way by sponsor.

Key speakers

Dr Elizabeth Caruana Galizia

Consultant Neurologist, St George's University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, and Research Lead for the Epilepsy Group, UK

Speaker's biography

Dr Caruana Galizia studied medicine at the University of Malta, where she continued her early medical training before pursuing formal training in Neurology in the UK. She undertook research at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery and was awarded a PhD in 2017 for her thesis on pharmacogenetics in epilepsy. She joined the Neurology Department at St George's Hospital in 2017 where she works as a Neurology Consultant with a specialist interest in Epilepsy and research lead for the Epilepsy Group.

Killian Welch

Edinburgh-based Neuropsychiatrist, UK

Speaker's biography

Killian Welch is an Edinburgh-based Neuropsychiatrist. He works in brain injury rehabilitation, as well as running neuropsychiatry outpatient clinics and providing liaison psychiatry input to neurology and rehabilitation inpatients.

His psychiatric training included substance misuse psychiatry and he is a qualified CBT practitioner.

He has a particular interest in psychological interventions to improve wellbeing in chronic neurological conditions, the relationship between cannabis and psychosis, management of substance misuse in neurological conditions and the complications of alcohol misuse.

Yvonne Langan

Consultant Clinical Neurophysiologist, St James’s Hospital, Dublin, Ireland

Speaker's biography

Yvonne trained in Neurology and Clinical Neurophysiology in Dublin, London and Newcastle upon Tyne. She has a particular interest in SUDEP.

Agenda

View the programme

Welcome and introduction 

Dr Bridget MacDonald, President, Clinical Neurosciences Section, Royal Society of Medicine  

Epilepsy and alcohol; what we all need to know

Elizabeth Galizia, Epileptologist, St George's University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

SUDEP and it's interaction with alcohol

Yvonne Langan, Consultant Clinical Neurophysiologist, St James’s Hospital, Dublin 

Managing alcohol and epilepsy - a psychiatrist's perspective

Killian Welch, Neuropsychiatrist 

Panel discussion

Elizabeth Galizia, Yvonne Langan, Killian Welch and Srikirti Kodali 

End of webinar

Sponsors

Arvelle

Location

Online

Disclaimer: All views expressed in this webinar are of the speakers themselves and not of the RSM nor the speaker's organisations.

Special rates for difficult times 
The RSM wishes to offer healthcare professionals continued learning opportunities during the coronavirus pandemic. The RSM’s ​weekly COVID-19 Series ​webinars remain free of charge, while there will be small charges to register for other online education. These fees will enable the RSM to continue its programme of activities and will apply during the course of the pandemic.

Registration for this webinar will close 2 hours prior to the start time. You will receive the webinar link 2 hours before the meeting. Late registrations will not be accepted.

All webinars will be available for registered delegates 30 days after on Zoom. The link will be sent 24 hours after the webinar takes place. 

This webinar will be recorded and stored by the Royal Society of Medicine and may be  distributed  in future on various internet channels. 

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