At AHN Epilepsy Center, cutting-edge medicine and surgery enable epilepsy patients to get their lives back
Pittsburgh and the surrounding metro areas have a unique sense of community. Technically, it’s one large city, but if you look closer, it’s really a patchwork of smaller communities that often work together for the betterment of the whole.
The same can be said of Allegheny Health Network (AHN), the non-profit academic medical system that services Pittsburgh and much of Western Pennsylvania. Between its 14 hospitals and its larger network of providers, AHN is a grouping of individual departments and specialists, each focused on a specific area of healthcare.
But often two or more of these departments within AHN will put their minds and skills together to deliver the best care and outcome to their patients. For example, AHN’s Neurologists and Neurosurgeons frequently join forces to combat a common foe: Epilepsy.
Epilepsy is a neurological disorder in which nerve cell activity in the brain is disrupted, periodically causing the body to go into seizure. The cause may be a genetic disorder or a traumatic brain injury, like a stroke. Whatever the root cause, epilepsy can be and often is very disruptive to the lives of the people experiencing it.
“It’s a very destructive disease,” says Alex C. Whiting, MD, neurological surgeon and Director of AHN Epilepsy Surgery. “Epilepsy is a disease where part of your brain starts to have an electrical signal that goes haywire and takes over your whole brain. The problem with epilepsy is that once the brain starts malfunctioning from the seizure, very bad things can happen. You can fall; you can even lose consciousness.”
AHN has pooled its neurological resources under the roof of its Comprehensive Epilepsy Center at Allegheny General Hospital. It is a level 4 epilepsy center, the highest ranking from the National Association of Epilepsy Centers (NAEC). It provides advanced neurodiagnostic monitoring and extensive medical, neurophysical, and psychosocial treatments for epilepsy, along with a broad range of surgical procedures—all using state-of-the-art techniques and technology.
Each epilepsy case that comes into AHN starts with the neurologists—the medical side of treatment. But the first step is making the correct diagnosis.
“There are different kinds of epilepsy, there are different kinds of seizures, and different seizures might respond to different treatments,” says James P. Valeriano, MD, Chair of the AHN Department of Neurology. “We can treat epilepsy by prescribing medications, but in about a third of the patients, the medicines may not work well. At that point, there are other things you can offer. And that’s where some of the new technologies will come in—the more advanced technologies we offer at AHN.”
Enter Dr. Whiting’s neurosurgical treatment options.
“The surgeons become involved when we get to the point where we want to fix the epilepsy with a procedure or when we want to use the robot to perform a procedure to find out where the epilepsy is coming from,” says Dr. Whiting.
The “robot” Dr. Whiting is referring to is the ROSA ONE® Brain system. ROSA is a cutting-edge robotic-arm technology that can essentially map the brain, pinpointing highly specific brain targets for electrode placement. This enables quicker, more accurate, and far less invasive surgery for epilepsy.
“In the past, to find out exactly where your epilepsy was coming from, it would require very invasive techniques,” says Whiting. “We can now do it safely and efficiently in a vary minimally invasive way. The robot allows us to do that and precisely localize where your epilepsy is coming from.”
Once the source of the epilepsy is found, AHN providers can leverage its expertise, advanced surgical solutions, and novel treatment options to make sure the patient experiences the best possible outcome.
But in addition to the most sophisticated possible treatments and high-tech procedures, AHN providers also believe in the basic human touch. The clinicians and staff know that there is still a stigma surrounding epilepsy and that it leads patients to feel unease and worry about how it will impact their lives and those of their family. That’s why AHN makes sure that when a patient comes in, they see the same person every time. Even if the care team expands to the neurosurgeons, the comfort of continuity of care is maintained.
“There’s a bond between the physician and the patient,” says Dr. Valeriano. “When you have someone gain control over their lives, you can see in their face what it means to them. As a doctor, it’s very gratifying.”
After all, AHN’s mission is to work across the healthcare disciplines and use the network’s vast resources to help each patient and their families recover from their world-shattering illnesses and injuries and enable them to get their lives back.
“I think the biggest misconception about epilepsy is that it’s a lifelong disease with no hope for patients who have been dealing with this for a long time,” says Dr. Whiting. “It can be very scary when you’ve gotten used to this disease, but this doesn’t have to be something you live with for the rest of your life. Come see us to discuss the right surgical treatment plan for you.”
To make an appointment with an AHN Epilepsy specialist, call 412.359.8850.
ROSA ONE® Brain is property of Zimmer Biomet and is used with permission.