Epilepsy is defined as a condition of having repeated seizures. More than 2.5 million Americans of all ages have epilepsy. As one of the most common disorders involving the brain, epilepsy and epilepsy symptoms affect people of all ages, races, and ethnic backgrounds.

The University Health System is home to the South Texas Comprehensive Epilepsy Center (STCEC) where the most advanced epilepsy medical and epilepsy surgical treatments are offered to people with epilepsy not controlled by medications. The comprehensive epilepsy center provides both inpatient and outpatient epilepsy diagnostic evaluations to determine the optimal treatments for adults and children with epilepsy. Pediatric and adult epilepsy surgery is offered at University Hospital by epilepsy specialists and neurosurgeons experienced in temporal lobe and extratemporal surgeries. More than 2500 patients are seen by epilepsy specialists at the clinics of the University Physician’s Group, University Health System – Downtown, and the Audie Murphy Veterans’ Administration Hospital each year. Epilepsy specialists also support the outreach clinics of the Epilepsy Foundation of South and Central Texas in Harlingen, Uvalde and Del Rio.

The University Hospital houses a nine-bed video-EEG monitoring unit, which includes beds in the pediatric transitional and intensive care units as well as adult floors. The state-of-the-art epilepsy monitoring unit features fully computerized digital recording system with 24-hour attended monitoring by highly experienced nurses and technical staff. Admission to the epilepsy monitoring unit allows patients’ seizures to be recorded and characterized, seizure medications to be changed, and more precise localization of the area of the brain where the seizures begin.

Other special services for patients with epilepsy include sophisticated neuroimaging, including high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), ictal single-photon-emission computed tomography (SPECT) and positron emission tomography (PET). Based upon the results of the testing, patients may be offered new seizure medications, enrollment in studies assessing the safety and benefit of medications before they become available to the general public, the Ketogenic Diet, or will be further evaluated for surgical intervention.

The faculty of the South Texas Comprehensive Epilepsy Center is also involved in basic epilepsy science and clinical epilepsy research aiming to improve the lives of patients with epilepsy and epilepsy symptoms. They publish their findings in medical and scientific journals and often are invited to present at national and international meetings of epilepsy specialists