Dr Richard Chin rewarded for paediatric epilepsy research

Links: - UCL Institute of Child Health - Sparks - Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health Richard Chin, a clinical lecturer at UCL Institute of Child Health (ICH) and Great Ormond Street NHS Trust, has won the Sparks charity's annual Young Investigator of the Year award for his work into childhood onset epilepsy. Chin's research demonstrates that children who suffer prolonged epileptic fits can be given widely varying treatments both on the way to hospital and when they arrive at A&E departments. According to Chin's study, the children are often not given the most effective treatments when they go through a potentially terrifying experience for the parents or carer. As part of his doctoral work, Chin established a large collaborative childhood epilepsy network to study children who have convulsive status epilepticus (CSE), the most common neurological emergency in children. The condition arises when children experience two or more convulsions or fits without regaining consciousness in between, or when they suffer a single prolonged seizure lasting more than 30 minutes. Chin found that the condition is more common in children than in adults, but less likely to prove fatal than previously believed. More than half the children in his study were under 5 years old and half of children had no history of previous neurological problems.