Instead, perhaps a minor brain injury in the period surrounding birth or an inherited tendency towards having seizures produces the episodes. Treatment with anti-epileptic medications usually reduces seizure frequency or eliminates seizures. Most persons with epilepsy are relatively well between episodes, and lead normallives. In some cases, standard medications fail to provide control, and patients are referred to Comprehensive Epilepsy Centers such as ours for expert management of drug therapy, experimental anti-epileptic drugs, and consideration for epilepsy surgery. Patients may also be considerably impaired by side effects of anti-epileptic medications.
Extensive evaluation is required to bring a child or adult to epilepsy surgery.
Our aim, always, is to improve quality of life. The EEG, even in between seizures, is often helpful in detecting the part of thebrain most involved in seizures. CAT scan and MRI help us identify structural problems in the brain which may be responsible for seizures, such as benign tumors or small areas of inflammation or malformation. Language, memory, concentration, motor, visual-spatial and other skills are assessed during neuropsychology testing , looking for areas of strength and weakness. Often parts of the brain severely affected by epilepsy do not work quite as well as other parts of the brain.