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Wayne Health’s Adult Epilepsy Program offers the most advanced medical and surgical treatment for individuals with epilepsy and related disorders. The Epilepsy program is affiliated with Wayne State University School of Medicine and the Detroit Medical Center and is strongly committed to clinical and translational research, academic teaching and medical education training. Our dedicated multidisciplinary team provides comprehensive epilepsy care with a full range of specialists, including neurologists, epileptologists, neurosurgeons, neuropsychologists, neuropathologists, neuroradiologists, EEG technologists and specialist epilepsy nurses. Although seizure control is a primary treatment objective, optimizing quality of life is also of paramount importance. Our program has been designated as a Level 4 Epilepsy Center, the highest designation by the National Association of Epilepsy Centers.
The main symptom of epilepsy is repeated seizures that happen without warning. Without treatment, seizures may continue and become worse and happen more often over time.
There are different kinds of seizures. You may have only one type of seizure. Some people have more than one type. Depending on what kind of seizure you have:
Not everyone who has seizures has epilepsy. Sometimes seizures happen because of an injury, an illness, or another problem. In these cases, the seizures stop when that problem improves or goes away.
Diagnosing epilepsy can be hard. Your doctor will ask questions to find out what happened just before, during and right after a seizure. Your doctor will examine you. You’ll have some tests, such as an electroencephalogram. This information can help your doctor decide what kind of seizures you have and if you have epilepsy.
Wayne Health’s Epilepsy team offers a full range of the most advanced diagnostic tests, including:
· Video EEG monitoring
· High-resolution volumetric MRI scanning
· Positron emission tomography (PET) scanning with multiple tracers
· Ictal and interictal Single Photon Emission Computerized Tomography (SPECT) scanning, with ability to perform subtraction imaging and co-registration with MRI (SISCOM)
· Functional MRI (fMRI)
· MR spectroscopy (MRS)
· Other MR imaging modalities, utilizing the 3-Tesla unit
· Intraoperative EEG monitoring
· Neuropsychological evaluation, including intracarotid amybarbital (Wada) testing
These advanced tools allow Wayne Health epilepsy experts to establish seizure classification, to assess response to medical therapy, and to evaluate patients for epilepsy surgery.
You can take medicines to control and reduce seizures. The type of medicine used depends on what types of seizures you have. You and your doctor will need to find the right combination, schedule, and dose of medicine. This may take time. After you find a medicine that works for you, take it exactly as prescribed.
If medicine alone doesn’t control your seizures, your doctor may recommend other treatments. They include:
Wayne Health’s outpatient Epilepsy Clinics evaluate and treat patients with refractory epilepsy and are referral centers for patients across the state of Michigan. Specialty clinics for Pregnancy and Epilepsy (established in 2015) and Epilepsy in the Elderly (established in 2017) distinguish us from other centers. In collaboration with Children’s Hospital of Michigan, we have an established mechanism for transitioning patients from the pediatric to the adult epilepsy clinic to optimize continuity of care for a wide range of pediatric-onset epilepsies, including “benign” and genetic complex conditions.
While most patients with epilepsy can have good control of their seizures with the appropriate medications, about 20 to 30% of patients may become refractory (difficult to control) with medical treatment. When medical management fails to control seizures, our comprehensive epilepsy team may consider patients for epilepsy surgery and other non-medical treatment options. Our team of subspecialty trained epileptologists will conduct a comprehensive evaluation and work with a multidisciplinary team to recommend different surgical options, including neuromodulation, disconnection procedures, or removal of the epileptic tissue and focus.
Therapeutic surgical options include:
Physicians and researchers at Wayne Health are also faculty members of the Wayne State University School of Medicine who conduct research and clinical studies. This makes the latest treatments and clinical trials available to you sooner than other health providers without a medical school affiliation.
Participation in investigational, multicenter research trials of new antiepileptic medications is available for patients with difficult-to-control epilepsy.
For more information, please visit the links below at the WSU School of Medicine.