Dr Athanasios Gaitatzis is a Consultant Neurologist specialised in Epileptology and Clinical Neurophysiology. He works at the Neurology Department at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, and at Perron Institute for Neurological and Translational Science where he recently started a dedicated Epilepsy and Pregnancy clinic, the first of its kind in Western Australia. His epilepsy clinics are focused on the care of people with drug-resistant epilepsy, complex epilepsy (in people with neurodevelopmental or psychiatric comorbidities), and epilepsy in women (dealing with preconception counselling, pregnancy and breastfeeding issues).
Dr Gaitatzis is subspecialised in Epilepsy and has expertise in diagnostic EEG in epilepsy, sleep and other disorders, and presurgical evaluation of epilepsy. Other clinical interests include headache and the neuropsychiatry of epilepsy. He is an active member of the Intellectual Developmental Disability Special Interest Group (SIG-IDD) and of the steering committee of the NeuroPsychiatry and Developmental Disability (NPDD) subnetwork of the Department of Health's Mental Health Network, both based at Graylands Hospital in Perth.
Dr Gaitatzis graduated from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Medical School in Greece (Ptychio Iatrikes). He worked in general medicine in Greece and England and became a member of the Royal College of Physicians (London). He worked as a Clinical Research Fellow in the Department of Clinical & Experimental Epilepsy at the UCL Institute of Neurology, Queen Square, London in the area of Neuroepidemiology and was awarded a MD degree (Doctorate of Medicine) by the University of London.
Dr Gaitatzis completed his specialist training in London and became dually accredited in Neurology and in Clinical Neurophysiology in the UK. He has worked at the University Hospital of Wales, Cardiff; Chelsea & Westminster Hospital, St George's Hospital, Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children, and The National Hospital for Neurology & Neurosurgery, London, UK. He completed a fellowship in Epilepsy Surgery and then worked as a Consultant Neurologist and Clinical Neurophysiologist at SEIN Epilepsy Institute in The Netherlands, Heemstede, the largest tertiary Epilepsy Centre in The Netherlands.
Dr Gaitatzis is a member of the Australian and New Zealand Association of Neurologists (ANZAN), Association of British Neurologists (ABN), Epilepsy Society of Australia (ESA) and the International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE). He is a tutor at the bi-annual international course "EEG in the Diagnosis and Management of Epilepsy" that is run by the Virtual Epilepsy Academy (VIREPA) Distance Educational Program of the ILAE. He also actively participates in teaching of UWA medical students, medical trainees, neurology advanced trainees, and neurophysiology technologists at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital.
Dr Gaitatzis' principal research and publication activity has been in the areas of somatic and psychiatric comorbidity, mortality, health services in epilepsy, and EEG. He has been a reviewer for a number of neurology journals.
