Newly-Approved Brain Stimulator Offers Hope for Individuals With Uncontrolled Epilepsy

http://www.rush.edu/webapps/MEDREL/servlet/NewsRelease?id=1758

April 21, 2014

Rush University Medical Center is the first in the country to use the device along with a unique electrode placement planning system

A recently FDA-approved device has been shown to reduce seizures in patients with medication-resistant epilepsy by as much as 50 percent. When coupled with an innovative electrode placement planning system developed by physicians at Rush, the device facilitated the complete elimination of seizures in nearly half of the implanted Rush patients enrolled in the decade-long clinical trials.

That’s good news for a large portion of the nearly 400,000 people in the U.S. living with epilepsy whose seizures can’t be controlled with medications and who are not candidates for brain surgery.

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According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2010, epilepsy affected approximately 2.3 million adults in the U.S. and 467,711 children under the age of 17.