Neurology and Developmental Neuroscience
Texas Children's EPILEPSY CENTER
A comprehensive service offered by Texas Children's, the
epilepsy monitoring unit provides diagnostic evaluation to support the care of children with epilepsy. The team includes professionals from several departments, including neurophysiology, neurology, neurosurgery, nursing, child life, physical medicine, neuroradiology, nuclear medicine, nutrition and social work.
Our 4 bed epilepsy monitoring unit
provides intensive in-patient monitoring that may last from
6 hours to several weeks, depending on each child's unique needs. Such intensive monitoring allows for
more exact diagnosis of children with suspected epilepsy or difficult-to-control seizures.
Patients are accepted to the epilepsy monitoring unit through
physician referral only. The unit may identify seizure types, quantify number of seizures and efficacy of medication, and provide surgical intervention as a treatment for intractable seizures.
Imaging
Diagnostic imaging plays a critical role in the evaluation of children with epilepsy. Imaging techniques available include 3-Tesla magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), functional MRI, magnetic resonance angiography (MRA), magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS), computed tomography angiography (CTA), conventional angiography endovascular intervention and single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT).
Our program also has available positron emission tomography (PET) and magnetoencephalography (MEG).
Surgery
Children with seizures not controlled by medication
may benefit from surgery. A number of different surgical procedures are available
and are tailored to the needs of the individual patient.
Such surgeries include resection of structural lesions of the brain such as tumors, malformations and scars, resection of regions of the brain causing seizures without a structural lesion (nonlesional surgery), corpus callosotomy (split brain procedure) and hemispherectomy (removal of half of the brain).
Some children achieve seizure control with highly focused radiation therapy called stereotactic radiosurgery (also referred to as Gamma Knife surgery). If resective surgery is not an option, the vagus nerve stimulator may help with seizure control.
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