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Epilepsy - Treatment
Treatment Options
Thanks to medical advances, epilepsy doesn’t have to control your life. A variety of medications and treatment options can control seizures with minimal drug side effects. When complete control is not possible, your Epilepsy Center team will strive to find a treatment that reduces the severity and frequency of seizures.
Our doctors, nurses, technicians and social workers will work with you to come up with the best individualized plan to fit your needs. Treatment options include the following:
Anticonvulsant medications. This is often the first line of treatment for a patient. Most epilepsy patients respond favorably to antiepileptic medications. Our team of experts will work with you to find the most beneficial medication with the fewest side effects.
Surgery. Approximately 20 to 30 percent of all epilepsy patients will experience medically refractory seizures. Those patients have a variety of surgical options, and we’ve found that following surgery, two-thirds of patients are seizure free, while 23 percent experience significant improvement in seizure frequency and severity. Surgeries include:
- Selective amygdalohippocampectomy
- Temporal lobectomy
- Corpus callosotomy
- Extra-temporal resection and other forms of partial tailored resections.
For patients who don’t qualify for resective surgery, gamma knife radiosurgery is an effective alternative. It treats the area of the brain that is affected, while sparing adjacent healthy, normal brain tissues.
Vagus Nerve Stimulation (VNS). This computerized electrical device is similar to a pacemaker in size and shape, and may reduce seizures. It is implanted under the skin in the chest and sends electrical currents to the vagus nerve in the neck. VNS is for patients who don’t respond to multiple medications and aren’t candidates for resective brain surgery.
Experimental Drug Trials. As a part of our ongoing epilepsy research, INI Epilepsy Center is currently involved in several international experimental drug trials, including the following:
- Brivaracetam
- Lacosamide
- Vigabatrin
- Vagus Nerve Stimulation in patients with refractory epilepsy
Epilepsy Monitoring Unit. Patients with intractable seizures whose diagnosis remains uncertain have access to our Epilepsy Monitoring Unit (EMU). Each of these four private rooms is hardwired to record seizures on video and EEG simultaneously. Our state-of-the-art diagnostic technology can help diagnose a variety of conditions that often mimic epilepsy, including the following:
- Episodes of vaso-vagal or cardiac syncope
- Complex migraine headaches
- Tremors
- Drug reactions
- Non-epileptic seizures of psychogenic origin
- Movement disorders, including myoclonus and dyskinesias
The Epilepsy Center
Illinois Neurological Institute Diagnostic Center
6th Floor, Glen Oak Building
OSF Saint Francis Medical Center
530 NE Glen Oak Avenue
Peoria, Illinois 61637
Hours
Monday – Friday, 8:30am – 4:30pm
Phone
(309) 624.8750
(800) 325.3059
The Epilepsy Center at the Illinois Neurological Institutes provides specialized epilepsy services for children in partnership with Children’s Hospital of Illinois, on the OSF Saint Francis Medical Center campus in Peoria, Illinois.
