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Surgery Helps Teen With Epilepsy

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Oct 9, 2008 4:09 pm US/Eastern

Surgery Helps Teen With Epilepsy

  Jessica Wilson, 15, has a lot to look forward to.

"Driving is coming up in the next couple years," she says.

Just a year ago, driving wasn't a realistic goal for Jessica. She's had epilepsy since she was six, and her seizures were unpredictable.

"The longest she went without a seizure was four months on one of the drugs but then they would start back up again," says her mother Debbie Wilson.

After multiple medicines failed, the Wilson's decided to see if Jessica was a candidate for epilepsy-curing brain surgery.

"Surgery in many cases is a chance to cure the epilepsy, the seizures go away, and you can come off medication and live the rest of your life with no seizures," says Dr. Deborah Holder, a pediatric neurologist at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh.

Patients are hospitalized for two or more weeks with electrodes attached to the brain.

During a seizure, doctors pinpoint the area of Jessica's brain that was triggering the problem.

"Your seizures have to be coming from one area of the brain and they have to, it has to be an area that we can safely go in and take out," explains Dr. Holder.

One year after brain surgery, Jessica's medicine- and seizure-free.

"As a parent, like I felt that I was giving her every opportunity to lead a normal life by having this done," says her Debbie.

Dr. Holder would like to see more families explore the possiblity of surgery. "We're doing surgery now on much younger patients. We've done, done kids as young as two years. Our goal would be to get rid of the epilepsy before the patient even knows they have seizures to try to cure the disease before it really affects their quality of life."

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