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The program serves adults and children with intractable (hard-to-treat) seizures, as well as those with other epilepsy-related diagnostic and management problems. The Center is certified by the New York Department of Health as qualified to carry out long-term video-EEG monitoring and epilepsy surgery for patients with intractable epilepsy. Exciting research conducted at the Center involves testing new experimental drugs and devices that help patients with hard-to-manage seizures.
When treatment with medication fails to provide control, neurologists, neurophysiologists, and neuroradiologists work together with other team members to evaluate the possibility of surgical treatment of carefully-selected intractable seizure disorders. At the Comprehensive Epilepsy Center, we approach the care of these more difficult cases through the use of the most advanced techniques, such as neurosurgical intervention and vagal nerve stimulation. Extensive "mapping" of the brain — by neurodiagnostic imaging, neuropsychological testing, and other methods of analysis — ensures that the neurosurgical approach, if chosen, is a safe and desirable option. State-of-the-art neurophysiologic monitoring is utilized to provide high quality intra-operative surveillance during neurosurgery and to guide patient treatment and progress in the neonatal and pediatric intensive care units and adult medical and surgical intensive care units.
At the Comprehensive Epilepsy Center, coordinated interdisciplinary care is a priority. Physicians, a nurse clinician, social workers, a neuropsychologist, language therapists, and occupational and physical therapists work together with families to provide support and appropriate interventions for concerns such as self-esteem, sexuality, and cognitive issues, altered parenting roles, reproductive decisions, and workplace disclosure issues.
