Life just got a little easier for Ottawa families dealing with epilepsy. The Childrens Hospital of Eastern Ontario has opened a specialized epilepsy monitoring unit (EMU) that will provide dedicated beds, specialized equipment and access to a team of health professionals to help in the diagnosis and treatment of epilepsy.
Each year, 15,000 Canadians are diagnosed with epilepsy, about 70 per cent of themunder the age of 18.
Dr. Sharon Whiting is the head of neurology at CHEO. Six-year-old Kailyn Lumsden-Perry was the first patientadmitted tothe EMU. She visited CHEO on Monday with her mother, Sarah Lumsden. The following interview has been edited and condensed.
Q: What is epilepsy?
Whiting: The brain is the control centre of the body. In a patient with epilepsy, either one or all of the cells the neurons are discharging abnormally. In that case, the patients develop seizures. Epilepsy is a condition where people are at an increased risk of seizures. Once you have had two unprovoked seizures, we consider that you have epilepsy.
Q. How does the EMU differ from how you would have treated epilepsy patients in the past?
Whiting: We would have had to bring them into the ward system and do the EEG monitoring on the ward. But because there was no fixed bed we could not, for example, taper their medications before they were admitted because you could never be sure if the bed would be available. During peak respiratory season you would think youd have a bed on Monday and the bed would be cancelled on Sunday night.
Q. Is the aim tohave the patient in hospital when a seizure occurs?
Whiting: Thats exactly what were aiming to do. And the EMU is not just for patients who have epilepsy. One of the aims is to determine if the person has epilepsy. Sometimes people may be having events that arent epilepsy.
Another aim is to classify the type of epilepsy the person is having. Thirdly, it can be part of theworkup for surgery.In a patient being considered for surgery, you want to record the seizures to be sure that the data is all concordant that seizures come from one area of the brain that youve recorded on the EEGorthe MRI. On all the testing you want the data to be aligned.
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CHEO opens unit to help diagnose childhood epilepsy