New epilepsy care centre launched in Bangalore

Bangalore, Sep 11 (UNI) The Narayana Institute of Neurosciences, an arm of the reputed Narayana Hrudayalaya, has set up a state-of-the-art epilepsy centre here.

Speaking to newspersons here today, Senior Consultant Neurosurgeon Dr Thimmappa Hegde said that taking into consideration the fact that there were few trained epilepsy specialists in the country and few centres to treat such cases, the Narayana Institute of Neurosciences had set up the centre where comprehensive epilepsy care programme had been launched.

He said the setting up of the centre was possible through donations from the Dr Syed Ahmed Health Trust and Rotary Club of Bangalore. ''It is the only centre in the private sector in the country which provides advanced epilepsy treatment at affordable costs and even at free of cost to the poor.'' Elaborating on the kind of treatment available at the centre, he said Video EEG monitoring to record the actual seizures, MRI scans of brain with special studies on the region of interest and Neuropsychological analysis could be conducted on patients suffering from intractable seizures. After conducting preliminary tests, the patient would be operated upon and within a couple of days, he would be fit to lead normal life.

Dr Hegde said epilepsy affected about one out of 200 people at some point in their lives and frequent seizures produce devastating psychological, familial, educational and occupational consequences.

About 25 per cent of patients would be refractory to medical management and continue to get disabling seizures and they often receive polydrug therapy which not only caused several adverse effects, but was also unlikely to significantly check seizure frequency. Surgery was the best option to cure such intractable seizures and success of the surgery depended on the identification and removal of the epileptogenic zone, the abnormal region of the brain responsible for the seizure.

He said that to create awareness among the public about the disease, the centre proposed to conduct camps at rural and urban areas.

UNI MV GD GM1800