Vanderbilt Clinical Neurosciences

The Vanderbilt Epilepsy Center is a national leader in treating epilepsy in children and adults. Our patients come from across Tennesssee and around the country. Our team of epilepsy doctors, healthcare professionals and support staff offer personalized, compassionate care to every patient. We are the only Level 4 Epilepsy Center in Middle Tennessee accredited by the National Association of Epilepsy Centers.

The main treatment options we offer are:

• Medicine
• Surgery
• Vagus nerve stimulation
• Ketogenic diet
• Experimental treatment is an option for eligible patients.

Monitoring
In the Epilepsy Monitoring Unit, our staff uses both video and EEG (electroencephalography) to monitor brain activity and seizures. This helps us make an accurate diagnosis and create the best possible treatment plan. We evaluate refractory epilepsy patients for surgical treatment including:

• Prolonged sleep-deprived video EEG recording for epileptiform activity localization and quantification
• MRI of the brain
• PET scan of the brain
• SPECT for comparison of interictal and ictal cerebral blood flow,
• Neuropsychological testing
• intracarotid amobarbital (Wada) for language and memory function.

If invasive monitoring is necessary, we use depth electrodes, a subdural strip or grid array electrodes.

Surgery
We offer surgical treatments including:

• Lobectomy
• Lesionectomy
• Corticectomy
• Hemi-spherectomycorpus callosotomy

We hold a special epilepsy surgery conference regularly to go over each case to make the best possible treatment decisions for our patients.