A unique operation in Szczecin. “Treatment of epilepsy at the highest level”
In the “Zdroje” hospital in Szczecin, doctors performed the first operation to remove the epileptiform focus. This is the second hospital in Poland (after the Children’s Health Center) that gives patients the opportunity to undergo such treatment.
Specialists from the Szczecin hospital do not lie – this is epilepsy treatment at the highest world level. As the hospital said in its announcement, at the moment only a few specialized centers have a modern set for the diagnosis and neurosurgical treatment of epilepsy (the facility received the equipment from the WOŚP Foundation).
The first patient to benefit from this treatment was an eight-year-old girl. – The operation consisted of minimally invasive, laser removal of the epileptiform focus. This method is only available in a few places in Europe. Nothing more can be offered at the world level – emphasized Prof. Leszek Sagan, neurosurgeon who led the team operating on the child.
For the stages of surgery for a child with epilepsy
As the doctors emphasize, the surgery was a huge challenge for the entire team – not only in terms of content and technical aspects, but also logistically, because the procedure was performed in two different places in the hospital. The first stage took place in the operating theater. Here, neurosurgeons made a small hole in the girl’s frontal bone through which they inserted a catheter with a fiber-optic cable into the deep structures of the brain. It was through him that the laser energy was to be delivered to the lesions requiring treatment.
Then the girl was transported to the magnetic resonance imaging laboratory. There, a team of specialists, under the control of magnetic resonance imaging, performed laser ablation (i.e. removal) of the tissues that were the source of epileptic seizures. Thanks to constant monitoring of the magnetic resonance image by a team of electroradiologists, neurosurgeons could constantly control the time and amount of laser energy that was delivered to the brain tissues.
The operated girl is feeling well
As emphasized by prof. Sagan, a huge advantage of the surgical method used in Szczecin is its minimal invasiveness. Thanks to this, the little patient, despite undergoing neurosurgical surgery, left the hospital 40 hours after the surgery. – I talked to the mother and the girl before they left the hospital. The patient felt great. We all have great hopes for this procedure. Everything seems to be on track and we keep our fingers crossed – said Dr. n.med. Łukasz Tyszler, hospital director. And finally he added: – I would like to congratulate the entire team, led by Professor Leszek Sagan. Thanks to you, we have a world-class epilepsy treatment center in “Zdroje”, with excellent, modern equipment that allows us to help children struggling with drug-resistant epilepsy, giving them a chance for normal life and proper development.
