Drug-Resistant Epilepsy
Leading-edge treatment for uncontrolled epilepsy
Treatment Resistant Epilepsy Care
Most seizures can be controlled with medication. Unfortunately, for about one-third of all individuals with epilepsy, medications either don’t work or lead to intolerable side effects. Experts in the Epilepsy Center at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) offer comprehensive care for treatment-resistant epilepsy.
What To Expect
During your first visit with us, you’ll meet with one of our epileptologists. An epileptologist is a neurologist who has extensive additional training and experience in treating seizures.
The first step in your care is for the epileptologist to ensure that you have received the correct epilepsy diagnosis. This is important because some medical and mental health conditions can mimic a seizure disorder. However, these require different kinds of treatments.
After this, we will ensure that you’ve tried the right types of medications for your type of epilepsy. We may continue adjusting medicines to see if that can bring your seizures under control.
Once we know the disorder is drug-resistant, we will consider surgery to help you. When you come to BIDMC, you can rest assured that your treatment is not just in the hands of a single doctor — but rather an entire team of experts.
Our specialists hold regular, multidisciplinary conferences. There, we discuss in detail complex cases and the best treatment options. This way, you can be sure that there are multiple highly qualified specialists reviewing your tests and care plan.
Diagnostic Services
Our specialists provide advanced diagnostic tests that help us diagnose even the most complex cases of drug-resistant epilepsy. Your epilepsy care team may use one or more of these diagnostic tests:
- Brain imaging tests such as high-resolution MRI, PET and SPECT scans
- Continuous video-electroencephalogram (EEG) recording on an epilepsy monitoring unit (EMU)
- High-density (HD) EEG with up to 256 scalp electrodes
- Intracranial electrode recordings
Depending on your needs, you may also meet with our epilepsy neurosurgeon.
Latest Treatment Options for Drug-Resistant Epilepsy
If medications haven’t been enough to manage your epilepsy, our team may suggest one of these surgical treatment options:
- Deep brain stimulation
- Laser ablation
- Resective brain surgery
- Responsive neurostimulation
- Stereotactic radiosurgery
- Vagus nerve stimulation (VNS)
Learn how to treat epilepsy without medication.
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