There are 50 million people living with epilepsy worldwide, and nearly one-fifth of them reside in India, according to the National Center for Biotechnology Information website. Many people with active epilepsy do not receive appropriate treatment for their condition for multiple reasons, the most common ones being poverty, lack of awareness about treatment drugs and stigma.
To highlight the problems faced by people with epilepsy and raise awareness about treatment, International Epilepsy Day is observed on the second Monday of February.
Consultant neurophysician at Renova Hospitals, B. Vijay Kumar said the cause of epilepsy depends on the age of onset of seizures. “The common causes in newborns include perinatal injury, respiratory distress, hypoglycemia, hypocalcemia, brain infections and haemorrhage. Febrile seizures are common in preschool children. Genetic generalised epilepsies are common causes in schoolgoing children and adolescent age group. Parasitic infections, like neurocysticercosis, are also common in Indian children while temporal lobe epilepsies are common in adolescents and younger adults,” he explained.
Dr Vijay Kumar added that strokes, head injuries and brain tumours are primary causes among the elderly population.
1,000 surgeries at KIMS
KIMS Hospitals management announced that they have reached the milestone of 1,000 epilepsy surgeries. They claimed that they are only third healthcare facility in the country to reach the landmark.
“Epilepsy surgery is performed on children and adults in whom seizures could not be controlled through medications. The surgery is performed to remove an area of the brain where seizures occur regularly. These surgical procedures are not the first line of treatment, but are performed when at least two types of anti-seizures drugs have failed to control seizures effectively,” informed a press note.
Senior consultant neurologist at the corporate hospital, Sita Jayalakshmi said nearly one-third of the patients have epilepsy that does not respond to medications, a condition known as drug-resistant epilepsy, and half of these patients are potential candidates for epilepsy surgery.
“Each patient under consideration for surgery participates in a thorough evaluation under the Comprehensive Epilepsy Program before surgery to control seizures. The electroencephalograms (EEGs) of patient candidates are recorded and analysed in the Epilepsy Monitoring Laboratory, which helps to classify the type and the locations of the observed seizures. In addition, advanced brain imaging studies, including 3TMRI scans, PET scans, and SPECT scans may be used together with sophisticated analysis to determine which surgical procedure might be most beneficial,” said Dr Jayalakshmi.
Senior consultant neurosurgeon Manas Panigrahi was part of the team.
