Pediatric Epilepsy Treatments
Partner with our compassionate pediatric neurologists for a broad range of treatment options when your child has epilepsy or a complex seizure disorder. Your child will get a personalized plan to treat and effectively control epilepsy and improve his or her life.
Epilepsy and seizure treatments at University Children’s Health may include one or a combination of:
- Medications
- Dietary therapy, such as the ketogenic diet, to help control seizures
- Seizure devices
- Surgical treatment
Seizure Devices: When Medications Do Not Work
Medication works well for many children with epilepsy to prevent or minimize seizures. Some children with complex neurological conditions do not respond well to medication.
When medications do not work, your doctor may recommend a surgical procedure to implant a device to prevent abnormal brain activity. The seizure devices work by sending small electrical pulses to the nervous system.
Implantable neurostimulation devices that work for epilepsy include:
Epilepsy Procedures & Surgery
Surgery may be effective for certain types of epilepsy. Common surgeries aim to reduce or stop seizures when medications do not help.
Count on our surgeons to ensure surgery is safe for your child beforehand. Your child’s doctor may want to do Wada testing. A Wada test evaluates how responsive each side of the brain is to language and memory functions to help retain the most function when performing surgery.
Effective surgeries and minimally invasive procedures for epilepsy are:
- Resection removes part of the brain where the seizure starts
- Disconnection of the area where the seizure starts in the brain
- Laser ablation, also known as laser interstitial thermal therapy, delivers heat to destroy a small area of brain cells causing seizures
- High-density EEG
- Ictal SPECT
- Subtraction PET
- Wada test (for adolescents)
- Functional MRI for language and motor mapping
- Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation for language and motor mapping
Online Resources
Learn more from the following epilepsy and seizure-related websites:
- Epilepsy Foundation of Central and South Texas
- Epilepsy Foundation of America
- Charlie Foundation for ketogenic diet information
- TSC Alliance for tuberous sclerosis complex information
