Doctors: Device can predict, help control seizures

FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- A new treatment for epilepsy is showing such promise that the Food and Drug Administration has already approved it. It's an implantable device that doctors say can predict when a seizure will happen to help control it.

Monica Lovelace's pride and joy are her two children. But life as a mom in Modesto was disrupted by epileptic seizures, which she struggled with for most of her adult life.

"My heart is racing like crazy, and then I black out," said Lovelace.

But all that changed when Lovelace became one of the early patients to get an implantable device that helps control seizures. She was part of a clinical trial at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco.

"The device is implanted in a small dent in the skull that we create," said Dr. Peter Weber with California Pacific Medical Center.

It's called the NeuroPace and works as an electronic stimulator to read signals in the brain that come before an epileptic seizure.

"When it senses those signals, it sends another small electrical pulse back to that area to try to abort the seizure," said Dr. Weber.

Once implanted, the NeuroPace is tuned to the brain waves with the help of external software.

Dr. Weber says the device was effective in more than 60 percent of patients -- reducing many seizure rates by half. The results were so encouraging, the FDA approved NeuroPace for the treatment of epilepsy.

"It gives hope to a segment of people that previously had very little to hope for," said Dr. Weber.

Surgeons are now implanting the device in patients who do not respond to medications or other treatments. In most cases those procedures are also covered by insurance. For patients, they offer the chance for the kind of improvement Lovelace experienced during the trial.

"Last month I did go a whole month without having seizures, which was like whoa," she said.

The NeuroPace costs about $35,000 and in most cases is covered by insurance.