If you experience seizures, getting them under control can change your life. At Palo Alto Medical Foundation, experienced doctors are committed to helping you achieve wellness by providing personalized care tor seizures, epilepsy and epilepsy-related problems.
PAMF treatments for epilepsy and seizure control include:
- Medication Management — This is often the first therapy approach for seizures. About 7 out of 10 people with epilepsy manage their seizures with medicine. Different seizures respond to different medications, so your doctor will work with you to determine which options yield the best outcome and to monitor any side effects or changes in your status.
- Vagus Nerve Stimulation — Doctors use VNS therapy for people who have seizures that do not respond to medications. It prevents seizures by pulsing the vagus nerve, a major nerve going to and from the brain, with regular, minor electrical pulses from an implanted device similar to a heart pacemaker. Your doctor will place the device, shaped like a round, flat battery, under the chest skin. A wire from the stimulator winds around the vagus nerve on the left side of the neck. It’s programmed to pulse at regular intervals, but most people don’t feel it.
Some Sutter Health locations also participate in epilepsy research studies, offering you access to the most advanced neuroscience technology and treatment available. We directly apply new laboratory findings to clinical use and facilitate patient participation in appropriate clinical trials and testing.
