Epilepsy Treatment: New Device May Predict Seizures, Study Suggests

Epilepsy patients may benefit from a promising new device designed to predict seizures in people with an uncontrollable type of the disease, a new study suggests.

Published in the journal Lancet Neurology, the study explains how the new implanted device showed promising results for some of the subjects that were part of the research.

"We just wanted to see if this is feasible, and this study shows that it is," said Dr. Mark Cook, the study's lead researcher from the University of Melbourne and St. Vincent's Hospital in Australia.

While the study was small, only 15 patients who were having at least two to 12 "disabling" seizures per month, Cook considers the findings "very exciting" because a device that could predict seizures has the potential to vastly improve the quality of life for people with epilepsy.

Cook added that if a patient knows they are going to have a seizure they could avoid potentially dangerous activities, such as driving or swimming.

Epilepsy is a neurological disorder that interrupts the brain's normal electrical activity, causing a seizure, which could vary between a very noticeable convulsion or smaller changes in a person's behavior.

There are medications available to treat people with epilepsy, but about 30 to 40 percent of patients do not respond to drugs intended to prevent seizures.

For the new study, the 15 participants were not responsive to epilepsy treatment and received the new implanted device.

The experimental implant consists of various electrodes that are placed between the skull and the brain, while wires are ran to another unit implanted under the skin on the chest.

After installation, the device wirelessly transmits information to a hand-held unit that flashes a red light in the event that there is a "high likelihood" that a seizure may be coming. Other signals include a blue light indicating a low likelihood and a white light signaling a "moderate" likelihood.

For 11 out of the 15 patients participating in the study, the new device was found to be able to accurately predict a seizure at least 65 percent of the time. Those patients were observed for the first four months of research and then were monitored for another four months.

During the second four months of observation, the device showed to work for eight out of the 11 patients, predicting correct high-risk alerts between 56 percent and 100 percent of the time. But experts say that there is a lot more to be done in regard to a device like the one developed in the new study.

"This study is an important first step," said Dr. Ashesh Mehta, director of epilepsy surgery at the North Shore-LIJ Comprehensive Epilepsy Care Center in Great Neck, New York.

"The next step would be to implant these in a larger sample of patient. And you need to see which groups of patients might be good candidates for this."

It is important to note that several of Cook's colleagues who were part of the research also work for the company that funded the study, Seattle-based NeuroVista, who also developed the technology.