Radiation Procedure May Control Epilepsy
New Surgery Undergoing Clinical Trials
Posted: 10:36 a.m. EDT June 4, 2002
Most people who have epilepsy lead outwardly normal lives -- but in privacy, many take medication or undergo surgery to control their illness.
A new, noninvasive surgical procedure that may eliminate epileptic seizures due to intractable epilepsy is being tested by the National Institutes of Health.
Right now, the only options available for epileptic patients involve medication or invasive surgery.
This new radiosurgery uses a device called a gamma knife -- which isn't a knife at all -- to focus 201 beams of gamma radiation on the precise location of the brain responsible for the seizures.
The radiation is diffused through a 300-pound collimator helmet, which resembles a large version of a kitchen colander. The patient's head is placed inside the helmet and held fast at four points to the skull.
When the beams converge, the targeted area of the brain receives a full-treatment dose of radiation. The procedure spares healthy areas of the brain from high-dose radiation exposure.
Treatment time is much less than that of traditional surgery, and the recovery period usually involves only one overnight hospital stay.
"This is the first clinical trial in the United States of this promising treatment for epilepsy," said Dr. Paul DesRosiers, assistant professor of radiation oncology at Indiana University School of Medicine, which is one of six institutions in the nation participating in the clinical trial. "As many as 10 patients will be treated at IU in this trial, which is designed to determine the most effective radiation dose for eliminating the seizure focus in the brain."
Patients over the age of 18 with a specific form of temporal lobe epilepsy, who would otherwise be candidates for the traditional surgery, are eligible to participate in this clinical trial.
It is estimated that up to 1 percent of the U.S. population has epilepsy and that 20 percent of those patients have the type of epilepsy that may benefit from the procedure, which researchers say is up to 95 percent effective.
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