Epilepsy: Advanced care for people with epilepsy and seizures

Epilepsy can affect various parts of your brain. Our EMU helps us track seizures as they happen and determine where in your brain they begin. This helps us decide which treatments are likely to be right for you.

You may spend up to nine days in our monitoring unit. There are some restrictions but you’re free to move around and go about your daily life in the unit. With the help of an electroencephalogram, we monitor the electrical activity in your brain. This test involves placing electrodes on your scalp and is painless.

Advanced neuroimaging tests can also help us see what is happening in your brain.

• MRI — Creates images of your brain using a magnetic field and radio waves. The test helps spot problems with the brain’s structure that could cause seizures.

• PET — Helps show where in the brain seizures occur. The test involves injecting a small amount of radioactive dye into your body. Then we do a special scan.

• Functional MRI — Measures changes in blood flow in certain areas of your brain. This helps doctors know which areas control functions like movement and speech, something that’s crucial when planning surgery.

This is a common surgery for epilepsy. It involves removing the front part of the temporal lobe, which is the area where seizures often originate. By removing this specific region, the surgery aims to reduce or even stop the seizures, offering the possibility of a better quality of life.

Involves removing tissue from lobes of the brain other than your temporal lobe. A surgeon identifies the specific region outside the temporal lobe that is responsible for causing seizures. They then remove or disconnect that area, aiming to prevent the abnormal electrical activity and providing a chance for a life with fewer or no seizures.

Involves disconnecting one hemisphere of the brain from the rest of the organ. It’s reserved for those with severe epilepsy whose seizures come from one side of the brain. The healthy side of the brain takes over the functions of the removed one, offering a potential reduction or elimination of seizures.

This is a minimally invasive surgery. It involves using a small fiber optic probe to deliver heat to the part of the brain causing your seizures. It’s done with MRI guidance.

Removes lesions of the brain causing seizures. An MRI identifies the lesions and assures that they can be removed safely.

This technique is used when the seizure focus is in critical areas of the brain that cannot be removed. Instead of removing the affected tissue, this procedure involves making multiple small incisions or cuts in the brain's outer layer (cortex) along the pathway of the abnormal electrical signals. By doing so, the surgeon can interrupt the spread of these signals while preserving vital brain functions.

DBS may be an option if medication isn’t working for you and other types of surgery aren’t the right treatment for your case. It involves placing electrodes in specific areas of your brain. Electrical signals from the electrodes will interfere with the brain signals causing your seizures. In many patients, this improves seizure control.

This treatment involves implanting a device somewhat like a pacemaker under your skin. It stimulates the nerve that helps your brain communicate with your major organs. This may help reduce the number of seizures you have.

RNS is a surgical treatment for epilepsy that does not require any brain tissue to be removed. Using an implanted device, seizures are detected with a goal of stopping them before they progress. The device monitors your brain waves through attached leads and when unusual activity is detected, an electric pulse is sent to that area of the brain to help prevent or shorten a seizure.

These diets are low in carbohydrates and high in fats. They’ve been shown to lower the number of seizures some people have.

This is the ketogenic diet used most often for adults. It limits net carbohydrates to 20 grams per day. It encourages fats such as olive oil, avocados, butter, heavy cream, nuts, and seeds.