Breakthrough in Epilepsy Treatment at Texas Children's Hospital - NBC 2 Houston KPRC

Learn more about the Neurosurgery Division at Texas Children's Hospital
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Learn more about the Comprehensive Epilepsy Program at Texas Children's Hospital
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Breyan's seizure-free story: One of the first patients who received the revolutionary epilepsy treatment
   • New Laser Treatment Gives Hope to Chi...  

Texas Children's Hospital is the first hospital in the world to use real-time MRI-guided thermal imaging and laser technology to destroy lesions in the brain that cause epilepsy and uncontrollable seizures. This new surgical approach offers a safer and significantly less invasive alternative to craniotomy, currently the most commonly used cranial surgical treatment for epilepsy. Because this revolutionary treatment is a less invasive procedure, patient recovery time is much shorter.

Five surgeries using this MRI-guided laser procedure have been successfully performed at Texas Children’s Hospital on pediatric epilepsy patients ranging in age from five to 15 years old, with widely varied types of brain lesions. In all cases, patients have been seizure-free since surgery and most were released within one to five days. The surgeries were performed by Dr. Daniel Curry, director of pediatric surgical epilepsy and functional neurosurgery, and Dr. Angus Wilfong, medical director of the Comprehensive Epilepsy Program.

A recent example of the effectiveness of this new surgery is 9-year-old Texas Children’s Hospital patient Keagan Dysart, who suffered from two types of epileptic seizures when he was diagnosed with a hypothalamic hamartoma in his brain. Keagan’s case was particularly high risk because his lesion was located in the hypothalamus, near the brain stem. The location, size and complexity of Keagan’s brain lesion made him an ideal candidate for the new surgical procedure, which was successfully performed without any surgical complications. Keagan is now seizure-free.

*Video courtesy of NBC 2 Houston KPRC