Discover the latest advances in adult and pediatric epilepsy care and treatment at Mount Sinai Health System’s Epilepsy Center. Epilepsy neurosurgeon Saadi Ghatan, MD, and epileptologist Lara Marcuse, MD, discuss the innovative strategies their teams use for seizure reduction and control.
Recognized nationally as a top Level 4 medical facility as designated by the National Association of Epilepsy Centers (NAEC), Mount Sinai’s 100-member team comprising neurosurgeons, neuropsychologists, neurologists, neuroscientists, social workers, recreational therapists, and others provides comprehensive routine care to individuals with seizures or epilepsy and specializes in diagnostic and treatment services to those with intractable or refractory epilepsy.
The team supports three inpatient Level 4 epilepsy centers at The Mount Sinai Hospital, Mount Sinai Kravis Children’s Hospital, and Mount Sinai West, as well as six outpatient locations in New York City and Long Island. In 2023, the Mount Sinai Health System performed more than 13,000 electroencephalograms and completed 100 surgeries to reduce or eliminate seizures for adult and pediatric patients.
The Mount Sinai Epilepsy Center offers the patients of other physicians intensive neurodiagnostic monitoring, extensive medical neuropsychological and psychosocial treatment, and complete evaluation for advanced epilepsy therapeutics, which can include intracranial electrodes and surgical procedures for epilepsy.
These ongoing collaborations with external neurology partners also facilitate a greater understanding of seizure onsets and of the epileptogenic network through the data provided from intracranial recordings via stereo EEG (electroencephalography) and long-term electrocorticography.
“There are options available to patients,” says Saadi Ghatan, MD, a renowned clinician and a leading researcher in the field, who serves as Chair of Neurosurgery for Mount Sinai West and Mount Sinai Morningside, and Professor of Neurosurgery, and Pediatrics, and Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “They include new diagnostic tools and neuromodulatory and responsive neurostimulator strategies that affect seizure control in a positive way for many. These are very appealing strategies,” says Dr. Ghatan.
Lara Marcuse, MD, Co-Director of the Epilepsy Center, and Associate Professor of Neurology, and Neurosurgery, Icahn Mount Sinai, brings invaluable expertise to the epilepsy leadership team. “The biggest hurdle may be the patient’s own fear about the process,” says Dr. Marcuse, “and what we sometimes try to communicate to the patient and family is that the seizures themselves are so much more dangerous than any surgical intervention, that living with uncontrolled seizures is a very risky business."