Seizure-free, musician and composer returns to performing

Source：University of Michigan Health Sy Release Date：2013-01-05 345

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Advanced brain monitoring, surgical planning and neurosurgery available at University of Michigan (U-M) Health System is part of epilepsy care that eliminates source of seizures

SIXTEEN months ago, musician and composer Paul Skripnik lay on an operating table at the University of Michigan Health System (Ann Arbor), ready to have brain surgery. He knew his case was a tricky one.

He had placed his trust in an epilepsy care team that would attempt to eliminate the source of the severe seizures that had plagued him every day for years. His epilepsy had kept him from attending music school and using his talents to the fullest – and even prevented him from driving.

This week, he celebrated his new seizure-free life with a concert of music he has written since that operation. Playing together with a dozen musician friends in a concert with the pun-filled title of “Seize the Day”, his performance on Saturday, Jan. 5 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, will raise money to help others with epilepsy.

Getting to this point wasn’t guaranteed. The part of his brain that spawned his seizures was close to areas that controlled his ability to play piano and percussion, and other tasks requiring manual dexterity and higher brain function.

But with advanced brain monitoring, surgical planning and neurosurgery available at U-M, the operation spared those areas while eliminating the source of his seizures.

U-M neurosurgeon Oren Sagher, M.D., led the surgical team that performed two operations. In the first, they placed devices called grids on the surface of the two areas of Skripnik’s brain suspected of harboring the seizure focus. For a week, the devices collected detailed information about electrical activity in those two areas.

This second operation, called a resection, zeroed in precisely on Skripnik’s seizure ‘focus’, the area of brain tissue where electrical activity between brain cells started going haywire at the beginning of each seizure. This allowed Sagher to remove the smallest possible amount of brain tissue.

Each epilepsy patient’s seizure focus is different, and the U-M epilepsy team uses a number of tools to find it, explains U-M neurologist Simon Glynn, M.D.

Electrical activity monitoring, called EEG, as well as brain imaging techniques using MRI and PET scanners, all helped themAir Max 90 NS GPX Mid