Epilepsy

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Epilepsy care at Mayo Clinic

Your Mayo Clinic care team

Mayo Clinic's world-renowned epilepsy teams include neurologists, neurosurgeons, imaging specialists (radiologists), mental health specialists (neuropsychologists) and other professionals who work together to provide exactly the care that you, your child or your family need.

The Mayo Clinic Epilepsy Clinic brings together these experts to offer care that's focused on both the person with epilepsy and the person's family. Children with epilepsy visiting the Mayo Clinic Children's Center receive compassionate, warm care that focuses on the whole family's integral role in epilepsy treatment.

Having all of this subspecialized expertise in a single place, focused on you, means that you're not just getting one opinion. Your care is discussed among the team, your test results are available quickly and appointments are scheduled in coordination. The most highly specialized epilepsy experts in the world are all working together for — and with — you and your family.

What might take months to accomplish elsewhere can typically be done in only a matter of days at Mayo Clinic.

Advanced diagnosis and treatment

Mayo Clinic epilepsy care teams use advanced technology, including subtraction ictal SPECT coregistered to MRI (SISCOM), electroencephalography, computerized tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, positron emission tomography and other tests to accurately diagnose epilepsy. Each Mayo Clinic location offers inpatient video EEG epilepsy monitoring.

With state-of-the-art research and laboratory facilities, Mayo Clinic experts are constantly seeking medical discoveries and innovations for people with epilepsy. Today's research teams are studying potential treatments, including new medicines and new surgical options. A variety of clinical trials and other clinical studies may be available to you at Mayo Clinic.

Mayo Clinic epilepsy care teams have experience treating epilepsy to eliminate seizures or reduce the frequency and intensity of seizures in children and adults. Treatment options at Mayo Clinic include medicines, vagus nerve stimulation, surgery, awake brain surgery, ketogenic diet and more.

Mayo Clinic is one of the leading deep brain stimulation implantation sites in the country — and one of the few facilities to have offered this advanced procedure prior to Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval. Deep brain stimulation can significantly reduce seizures in people whose epilepsy is difficult to treat. Experts at Mayo Clinic have performed deep brain stimulation for more than a decade with good effectiveness, so they're able to offer you the highest levels of safety and experience.

People with focal epilepsy who can't undergo surgery may have another option at Mayo Clinic — subthreshold cortical stimulation. This therapy stops seizures before they start. It may offer better reduction in seizures and improvements in quality of life compared with other types of nerve stimulation.

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Oct. 14, 2023
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Epilepsy