The childhood epilepsy can be treated and the new drugs shall improve the life quality of those affected, by lessening the number of seizures. 70% of the cases might be controlled by the drugs but do not cure the disease. However, 30% of patients whose epilepsy has not been controlled with drugs might be candidates for epileptic surgery or other alternatives such as the vagal nerve stimulator (VNS), the ketogenic diet o hormone treatment.
The main goal of our team shall be to choose the most effective treatment with the lesser side effects to improve the child’s life quality.
The antiepileptic drugs act upon channels and receptors of sodium, calcium and GABA receptors and upon neuron glutamate.
As a general rule, the epileptic treatment should not interfere in the child learning, as long as the drug has been correctly prescribed. Moreover, poorly controlled epilepsy can have a negative impact over the child learning, whereas by cutting the seizure out, the treatment can highly benefit the child’s school performance.
However, it is convenient to evaluate the future cognitive functions for managing the doses and the drugs adjustments.
10% of patients to whom epilepsy has not been able to control with drugs can be candidates to epileptic surgery. Using this technique, almost 75% of them can be freed from the seizures. Candidates to a surgical treatment shall undertake previous studies to determine whether they can undergo surgery or not.
For that reason, it will be necessary to locate the seizures origin and if the surgery can be performed without damaging the cognitive and motor functions.
In some kids with unmanageable epilepsies can try a special diet, the ketogenic diet, which in some cases can end up being very efficient. This diet consists on reverse the amount of fat and carbohydrates provided to the child and produce ketogenic bodies which help to improve the epilepsy.
Our specialists work on diets totally adapted to children suffering epilepsy with basic products.
2) Vagal Nerve Stimulator (VNS)
VNS therapy consists of intermittent stimulation of the left cervical vagus nerve delivered via the VNS Therapy System implanted under the thorax skin.
3) Hormonal Treatment
Epilepsy can also be controlled through hormones; more precisely with the Adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) or corticoids.
The patient should stay inpatient for a week in order to monitoring his evolution and evaluate the results (EEG video) since this sort of treatments can provoke side effects, like hypertension and obesity.
