Increasing epilepsy/seizure awareness

 Chronic seizures can have a negative impact on a child’s education as a consequence of learning difficulties and the associated psychosocial effects, such as poor peer relations, behavioral difficulties, poor school performance, depression, anxiety, and poor self-esteem. Seizure medications and frequent seizures have harmful effect on the developing brain and can lead to severe impairment.
Need to identify patients with surgically remediable epilepsy early in life before the psychosocial consequences of prolonged disability prevent useful rehabilitation because the longer a child lives as a disabled epileptic, the more difficult it will be for them to become fully functional after successful seizure surgery.

Early surgical intervention can:
• Help to stop the development of psychological and intellectual impairment
• allow for optimum brain development
• reduce undesirable side effects of medical therapy/medication
• allow many children with seizures to lead normal, productive lives
• Currently, surgery is only therapy that offers chance of a “cure”
• The key to successful outcome = early identification of appropriate surgical candidates through comprehensive preoperative evaluation

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