Searching through seizures
Alex has suffered from epilepsy since he was 16 years old, he has up to three seizures a week, usually while he’s sleeping. Alex spent last week in our neurology clinical trials ward, the only one of its kind in Australia – to try get to the bottom of his seizures.
The epilepsy team put Alex on a week-long Video Electroencephalogram Monitoring Test (VEEG) reverse sleep study, where he slept during the day and stayed awake from 10pm to 9am.
Like 30 per cent of the population who have epilepsy, Alex suffers from drug resistant epilepsy - meaning he’s unable to control his seizures with medication. In Alex’s case, his epilepsy located is in his frontal lobe, by doing a VEEG our team are trying work out if they can surgically treat this area without causing any damage to Alex’s brain function.
Unfortunately, during his stay, Alex’s seizures were too aggressive for the team to get the results they needed. But what they did find, is that the part of the brain responsible for his seizures, is deeper than expected. Alex will now go on for further specialised tests and return in a month for another week-long study - with the hope to find more answers.