Yunping Li, MD

About Dr. Yunping Li

Dr. Yunping Li is an Assistant Professor of Anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School and attending anesthesiologist in the Department of Anesthesia, Critical Care and Pain Medicine, focusing in Obstetric Anesthesia and anesthesia for gynecological surgery. Dr. Li joined the Department in 2000 after completing anesthesia residency at BIDMC.

As a clinical investigator, Dr. Li was successful in obtaining funding both from a NIH T32 training grant, and a FAER Mentored Research Training Grant through American Society of Anesthesiology. She was then awarded the Milton Fund through Harvard Medical School. Her interests span both signal transduction in uterine smooth muscle and obstetric anesthesia clinical research.

In several recent publications, Dr. Li has shown that focal adhesion - Src signaling is required for myometrial activation and contractile phenotype switch before labor onset. In addition to her basic science research, Dr. Li is also pursuing clinical research. She and her colleagues have demonstrated that epidural analgesia will not prolong the second stage of labor, specifically the epidural uses lower concentration of local anesthetics. This contrasts to many obstetricians' fear that epidural anesthesia lengthens the duration of labor. Her current research focuses on gastric emptying during labor and optimal post cesarean delivery pain control.