Epilepsy Treatment & Care
Make an Appointment
Experiencing a seizure is a disorienting and alarming experience. If you've had two or more seizures, you may have epilepsy. At UVA Health, you'll find specialists who can help lower the number of seizures you have. Our epilepsy treatment specialists use the most advanced tools to support and care for you.
Epilepsy Treatment at UVA Health
Our epilepsy services have achieved international recognition for our robust services.
It takes high-tech expertise to track and understand your brain and the electrical signals that cause your seizures. The more we know, the better we can treat you.
As an academic medical center, our experts use the latest research to give you specialized, targeted care.
Do You Have Complex Seizures?
Complex epilepsy or complex seizures can fly under the radar. Sometimes people don't even know they have them.
The National Association of Epilepsy Centers has accredited our program as a level 4 epilepsy center. This means we offer the expertise and facilities necessary to provide the highest level of care for complex epilepsy.
Types of Epilepsy We Treat
- Benign rolandic epilepsy
- Childhood absence epilepsy
- Chronic epilepsy
- Developmental malformations
- Frontal lobe epilepsy
- Genetic epilepsies
- Hypothalamic hamartomas
- Infantile spasms
- Juvenile myoclonic epilepsy
- Lennox-Gastaut syndrome
- Resistant epilepsy
- Temporal lobe epilepsy
- Tuberous sclerosis
Why Choose UVA Health?
Nathan Fountain, MD, explains why he treats epilepsy at UVA Health.
[MUSIC PLAYING] NATHAN FOUNTAIN: We are one of the first comprehensive epilepsy programs. We have a long history to build upon. 40 years ago, comprehensive meant having access to nurses with special training to dietitians to physical therapy. Now comprehensive's really shifted its focus and what it means is having available every diagnostic test that is available to anyone else and also having all treatment modalities available. That means all kinds of treatment.
Epilepsy is a difficult condition to have, because it does cause seizures. So job one in the treatment of epilepsy is to suppress seizures, typically through medications or other kinds of treatments and that's really what people are after. No seizures, no side effects. For patients who have seizures that aren't controlled with medications, then we often consider devices.
There's one that can be placed in the neck called Vagus Nerve Stimulation, one that can now be placed in the skull that's a small computer that monitors brain wave activity and can provide a little electrical stimulus to the place where the seizures are coming from. And for people who are appropriate candidates, meaning having seizures from one small spot in the brain we can safely remove, then epilepsy surgery is really gratifying, because then it provides the one opportunity really for a cure for epilepsy.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Epilepsy Care: Diet, Therapies, & More
Our program includes:
- Evaluation
- Video-EEG monitoring
- Neuropsychological evaluation and consultation
- Psychological evaluation and social services
- Rehabilitation, physical and occupational therapy
- Ketogenic diet and nutritional guidance
- Medication management
- Surgical evaluation
Treating Medication-Resistant Epilepsy
If anti-seizure medicines don't work well enough for your epilepsy, you may have intractable epilepsy. We offer several treatments for this kind of epilepsy, including:
- Surgery, including Gamma Knife
- Vagus nerve stimulation
- Other medications