In a move that will help up to 150 epileptic patients a year whose condition has not responded positively to anti-seizure drugs, NHS England will offer a potentially life-changing new form of surgery on the part of their brain causing their seizures, reports The Guardian.
The fibre-optic laser beam surgery will help epilepsy sufferers avoid much more invasive neurosurgery, and offer hope to hundreds of sufferers of the condition.
Surgeons will start deploying the treatment at two as-yet unidentified hospitals early next year.
About 600 000 Britons – almost one in 100 of the population – have epilepsy. A third cannot control their condition using just medication. They may need to have neurosurgery to remove the part of their brain that is causing them to have seizures, which can be fatal.
Professor Sir Stephen Powis, NHS England’s national medial director, said: “This pioneering laser beam treatment for epilepsy patients is life-changing and will offer hope to hundreds of people every year who have not had success in preventing seizures with traditional drugs.
“By replacing invasive neurosurgery with a cutting-edge laser therapy, allowing clinicians to better target the parts of the brain causing the epilepsy, we not only dramatically reduce risks to these patients, but drastically reduce their recovery time both in and out of hospital.”
While about 150 000 people have seizures, only about 10 000 of them are candidates to have neurosurgery, NHS England said, because the source of the seizure cannot be localised or the fits are not frequent or intense enough. Only a fraction of these people decide to have neurosurgery.
The people eligible for the new laser surgery will have focal epilepsy that has not been controlled by them taking maximum doses of two different drugs and who have been examined at an epilepsy surgery centre.
Professor James Palmer, the NHS’ medical director for specialised services, said it was “a game-changing breakthrough …and will give those with epilepsy a real chance to live a normal life”.
Patients will be able to go home the next day and resume work and normal activities a week later, whereas those who undergo neurosurgery stay in hospital for a week and need to recover at home for three months.
Maxine Smeaton, the chief executive of Epilepsy Research UK, welcomed the move but added: “Chronic underinvestment in epilepsy research has meant effective treatments for everyone living with the condition are still decades away. Despite being one of the most common, serious neurological conditions, just 0.3% of the £4.8bn spent on health-related research was invested in epilepsy. We need more investment and more research so that we can achieve important patient innovations such as this.”
The Guardian article – NHS to offer epilepsy patients new form of laser surgery (Open access)
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
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Epilepsy: Seizures not forecastable as expected
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Epilepsy patients benefit from early surgery