Department Overview

Epilepsy Section

Faculty:

Michael Smith, M.D. Section Head		Antoaneta Balabanov, M.D.		Donna Bergen, M.D.
Andres Kanner, M.D.		Marvin Rossi, M.D.
Richard N. Rovner, M.D. Thomas Hoeppner, Ph.D

Rush Epilepsy Center

The work of the Rush Epilepsy Center is devoted to patients with epilepsy or epileptic-like symptoms. A team of physicians, nurse practitioner, a clinical nurse specialist, three nurses and a social worker staff outpatient clinics at the Rush Neuroscience Institute. Emphasis is on comprehensive treatment with the aid of support groups and the local chapter of the Epilepsy Foundation of America.

The epilepsy surgery program has long been one of the most active in the United States. Multiple subpial transection, a surgical technique for treating nonresectable cortical tissue, was developed at Rush. The epilepsy clinic at Stroger Hospital also provides outpatient care for adults with a variety of epileptic disorders.

The electroencephalography laboratory at Rush provides inpatient services, including evoked potentials, frequency analysis and EEG brain mapping. Facilities include seven 24-hour-a-day EEG/video monitoring rooms in the neurology unit of Rush, as well as the capability of monitoring video-EEG from the medical, pediatric and neurosurgical intensive care units.

The educational program of the Rush Epilepsy Center includes the evaluation and treatment of patients admitted for diagnostic or presurgical monitoring to the Rush Epilepsy Center as well as patients evaluated in the outpatient epilepsy clinics and in the EEG/evoked potential laboratory at Rush. At the EEG laboratory, routine inpatient and outpatient EEG studies and evoked potentials are done on patients of all ages including neonates from the neonatal intensive care unit. Residents are taught by attendings from the section and by fellows in neurophysiology and epilepsy.

Research includes clinical projects focusing on the surgery program, animal work on epileptogenesis and neuropharmacology, psychiatric aspects of epilepsy, neuroimaging in epilepsy and investigational drug and neurostimulator trials. Residents are encouraged to participate in research projects underway in the center or to undertake their own research under supervision of epilepsy faculty.