 Hi, I'm Dr. Pramod Krishnan. I'm a consultant neurologist at Manipal Hospital, Bangalore. I specialize in epilepsy. So what is epilepsy? Epilepsy is a chronic disease of the brain in which a patient suffers from repeated attacks of seizures. Two or more seizures that are not provoked is what would be necessary to diagnose a person as having epilepsy. It's much more common in children and very common in the elderly and less so in case of young adults. Now, what are the causes of epilepsy? There are many many causes of epilepsy. It could be a developmental defect of the brain at birth. It could be a birth injury suffered during the time of birth. It could be a severe meningeal or encephalitic illness of the brain in childhood or infancy. It can be because of trauma to the brain due to accidents. It can be due to use of abuse, substance abuse like alcohol or other substances. It can happen due to stroke. It can happen due to tumors. So there are many causes of epilepsy and therefore each person, his epilepsy is different and our approach to that epilepsy would be different. How do we know a person has epilepsy? So if someone has recurrent seizures, we consider that patient to have epilepsy as long as the seizures are unprovoked. There are several tests that needs to be done to establish a diagnosis of epilepsy. The most common test that your doctor will order would be an electro-NK program called the EEG that records brain electrical activity and MRI of the brain to look for any structural defects in the brain and additional blood tests and investigations depending on each patient. Once you diagnose epilepsy, we come to the treatment of epilepsy. The treatment of epilepsy is with medications that are commonly referred to as anti-epileptic medications. These medications need to be continued for a long period of time, probably a minimum duration of two years, but some patients have to take it for a longer period and some patients have to take it for life. In a small subset of patients, we can offer surgery to treat epilepsy. If these patients do undergo surgery, there is a very high chance that they might be cured from epilepsy and their epilepsy medications can be reduced and sometimes the medications can even be stopped. We recently had a child who had a scar in his brain in the right side, frontal region, which happened due to a birth injury. And he had seizures going on since then, almost on a daily basis. He had tried multiple medications and he did not find relief or seizure control. When we did the MRI and the EEG, we could prove that the epilepsy is originating from the right frontal region of the brain and we knew that this patient would be a good candidate for surgery. We offered him surgery. He underwent resection that is removal of that scar tissue from the brain. And since then, it's been more than a year and a half and he's been seizure free. His medications have been significantly reduced and we're hoping that in the coming year or so, we might be able to even stop his medications. So like this, in some people, we can offer surgery as a cure for epilepsy. Now, in patients with epilepsy who are on medicines, certain factors can aggravate their epilepsy. If you don't follow a proper sleep routine, if you use alcohol or smoking, if you have a very hectic and stressful lifestyle, the treatment of epilepsy becomes difficult. The seizures become more prominent and frequent and you may end up requiring more medications. So for epilepsy, you need to have a neurologist or preferably someone who specializes in epilepsy and a center that also offers the wide ranging facilities that are required to diagnose and manage epilepsy. So there are a few centers across the city, across the country, where you can expect a good treatment and management of epilepsy. So Manipal Hospital runs a very comprehensive epilepsy program. We offer treatment for all types of epilepsy. And we also have epilepsy surgery being performed on a regular basis. And we have significant expertise across all age groups and all types of pathologies, and we have a good outcome in most of our patients with epilepsy.