The Emory Epilepsy Center uses the latest diagnostic tools to identify the causes of epilepsy. The tools include:

• Electroencephalography (EEG) to measure brain electrical activity. EEG can be performed with video, or as a prolonged ambulatory recording.
  
• Structural Neuroimaging, a major diagnostic service of the Emory Epilepsy Center and Emory Department of Radiology, to detect lesions and biochemical dysfunction that cause epilepsy.  
  
• Functional Neuroimaging, with positron emission tomography (PET) or single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) scans, to map the patterns of blood flow, energy use and membrane receptors in specific brain regions.
  
• Neuropsychological Testing to measure the severity of memory and other cognitive dysfunction that can occur interictally in many individuals with epilepsy.
  
• Genetic Testing, Blood Chemistry and other laboratory tests also can help identify the causes of an individual?s epilepsy.
  

Diagnosis of Seizure Types

Lack of seizure control in patients who are taking anti-seizure medication as prescribed can arise from diagnostic inaccuracies. In some instances, seemingly typical seizure behaviors can be generated by psychological mechanisms in the absence of epilepsy. In other cases, brief bursts of bizarre behaviors, which can occur in psychotic episodes or other psychiatric conditions, are in fact, manifestations of epileptic seizures.
Occasionally, parasomnias and other seizure-like, non-psychiatric conditions also can be mistaken for epilepsy.

The Emory Epilepsy Monitoring Unit allows for continuous video-EEG monitoring. Continuous monitoring can improve diagnostic accuracy when the diagnosis of epilepsy, particular seizure type, or location of onset is not clear by routine or prolonged EEG recordings. The accurate diagnosis of seizure types aids in the appropriate selection of effective medications and possible surgical treatment options. Accurate diagnosis also may lead to the discontinuation of medications that have been causing drowsiness, impaired thinking or other adverse effects.

Therapeutic Services

• Anti-Epileptic Drug Therapies
  Anti-epileptic drugs can control seizures completely in more than two-thirds of epilepsy patients. In many cases, an epilepsy specialist must make adjustments to standard drug regimens in order to achieve complete seizure control.
  
  Some patients may want to participate in clinical trials of investigational anti-epileptic drugs at the Emory Epilepsy Center. The Center also offers expertise with patient groups that typically experience special problems with these medications, such as pregnant woman, children with learning or behavioral problems and the elderly.
  
• Epilepsy Surgery
  The Emory Epilepsy Center has been very successful with the use of surgery to treat certain cases of epilepsy. For example, temporal lobe epilepsy, the single most common type of epilepsy, typically responds well to selective amygdalo-hippocampectomy. Other types of epilepsy can respond well to different surgical procedures, such as topectomy or corpus callosotomy. While not every patient is a surgical candidate, epilepsy surgery now offers hope in selected patients whose seizures cannot be controlled with medication alone.
  
• Vagus Nerve Stimulation
  The Emory Epilepsy Center has expertise with this procedure, which is designed to block seizure-producing electrical activity in the brain via stimulation of the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve stimulator is an excellent alternative to patients who have medically-refractory seizures but are not surgical candidates.