Dr. Ya-Chi Li

About

The scope of practice here has an unusual shape. It names three disease families rather than one sub-specialty label: gout and degenerative joint diseases such as osteoarthritis; allergic diseases such as allergic rhinitis and urticaria; and autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, Sjogren’s syndrome, ankylosing spondylitis, vasculitis and myositis. Those are three separate consultation reasons in ordinary practice, held by one physician, which is the practical definition of an allergy, immunology and rheumatology clinic.

Dr. Ya-Chi Li holds a part-time attending physician post on NUWA Fertility Center’s immunology team, the group the clinic convenes for the immune questions that arrive through a fertility case. The hospital appointment behind that work is attending physician in the Allergy Immunology Rheumatology Division of Tri-Service General Hospital’s Department of Internal Medicine — the division that also trained the residency years.

The training path itself begins one step earlier than most rheumatology profiles: resident physician in the Department of Internal Medicine at Tri-Service General Hospital, then resident physician in that hospital’s Allergy Immunology Rheumatology Division, then attending physician at the Keelung Branch, then back to the main hospital as attending physician. A lectureship at National Defense Medical Center, where the medical degree was earned, and visiting scholar time at the University of Washington in Seattle sit alongside those hospital years.

Clinical Expertise

• Immune-factor infertility assessment: deciding whether an immune abnormality on a laboratory report is actually doing anything to a cycle, which requires reading the marker against the history rather than treating the number.
• Allergy, immunology and rheumatology: the parent division covering mast-cell and IgE-mediated disease, immune dysregulation and inflammatory joint conditions, with chronic inflammation as the common thread.
• Autoimmune disease management: rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, Sjogren’s syndrome, ankylosing spondylitis, vasculitis and myositis, each requiring long-term immunomodulatory medication whose compatibility with pregnancy differs drug by drug.
• Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE): pregnancy planned into a stretch of quiet disease, then watched through gestation because activity can change after conception, with separate attention to the antibodies that cross the placenta.
• Sjogren’s syndrome: an autoimmune condition defined by specific autoantibodies, one class of which is associated with abnormal fetal cardiac conduction, so antibody status is assessed before pregnancy rather than discovered during it.
• Rheumatoid arthritis: disease control maintained through conception and gestation, which often means substituting medications before pregnancy is achieved rather than after.
• Allergic rhinitis and urticaria: antihistamine and related therapy reviewed for pregnancy compatibility, with persistent allergic inflammation considered as part of the wider immune picture.
• Gout and degenerative joint disease: urate-lowering and anti-inflammatory regimens and the metabolic conditions that accompany them, weighed against family planning timelines.

Why Choose Dr. Li

Three sub-domains under one consultation. An immune infertility workup rarely stays inside one category: urticaria and joint symptoms can be the presenting complaint while an autoimmune disease is what actually needs excluding. Covering joint, allergic and autoimmune disease in a single list means that triage happens once, with one physician deciding which branch the findings belong to.

Internal medicine before the sub-specialty. Residency began in the Department of Internal Medicine at Tri-Service General Hospital before the Allergy Immunology Rheumatology Division followed. For a fertility patient carrying metabolic, thyroid or renal questions alongside immune ones, that general internal medicine grounding is what keeps an incidental laboratory marker from being promoted into a diagnosis.

Hospital practice at a main centre and a branch. The attending physician post at Tri-Service General Hospital Keelung Branch preceded the appointment at the main hospital in the same division, meaning independent practice happened first in a smaller hospital where rheumatology referrals come mixed with general admissions, then at a medical centre with the full range of inpatient immune disease.

Named autoimmune conditions instead of a catch-all. Sjogren’s syndrome and rheumatoid arthritis are broken out as their own entries rather than left inside the autoimmune group. For a patient who already holds one of those diagnoses, that specificity is what makes the pre-pregnancy medication conversation concrete.

Overseas research exposure. Visiting scholar time at the University of Washington in Seattle follows the medical degree at National Defense Medical Center. Immune causes of implantation failure are an area where published claims outrun the evidence, so contact with a research environment is relevant when deciding which test is worth ordering.

Professional Affiliations

Training and practice stay inside two connected institutions. The medical degree came from the School of Medicine at National Defense Medical Center, where a lectureship followed, and the hospital career ran through Tri-Service General Hospital: residency in internal medicine, then residency in the Allergy Immunology Rheumatology Division, then attending physician duties at the Keelung Branch before returning to the main hospital in the same field, where the current appointment is held. Visiting scholar time at the University of Washington sits outside that sequence.

Suitable For

Recurrent loss with immune markers in the report: positive antibody results are common in healthy people and only some of them mean anything for a pregnancy, so the interpretation step determines whether treatment is needed at all. A rheumatology reading is the one that distinguishes the two.

Trying to conceive with lupus or Sjogren’s syndrome: both turn on how active the disease is at conception and on which autoantibodies are present, and some of those antibodies matter for the fetus as much as for the mother. Antibody status and the medication list therefore get reviewed before the first scan rather than after it.

Rheumatoid arthritis drug changes before pregnancy: several standard disease-modifying and anti-inflammatory drugs are not used in gestation, and switching carries a flare risk of its own, which means the substitution has to be timed while disease control still holds.

Chronic urticaria or allergic rhinitis alongside a fertility plan: antihistamine and related therapy needs reviewing for pregnancy use, and ongoing allergic inflammation is one of the inputs when the wider immune picture is being assessed.

Gout or osteoarthritis with long-term medication: urate-lowering and joint disease regimens run for years and interact with metabolic conditions, so a pregnancy plan changes the drug conversation rather than ending it.

Ankylosing spondylitis, vasculitis or myositis through pregnancy: biologics and conventional immunosuppressants in these conditions differ in pregnancy compatibility and in how abruptly they can be stopped, so control of the disease and the obstetric timetable have to be sequenced together.