2009 Press Releases

Saint Barnabas Comprehensive Epilepsy Centers Awarded Highest Designation

LIVINGSTON -- The Comprehensive Epilepsy Center, part of The Saint Barnabas Institute of Neurology and Neurosurgery, has been named a Level 4 specialized epilepsy center by the National Association of Epilepsy Centers (NAEC). The Level 4 designation is the highest given by the NAEC and identifies those centers that offer the broadest range of complex medical and surgical treatments for epilepsy. The Program is one of only three in New Jersey to earn this designation.

"This Level 4 designation is shared by the best academic centers in the country," said Eric B. Geller, M.D., Director of the Adult Comprehensive Epilepsy Center. “As a result, our patients have access to a highly-specialized team of health care professionals and the most advanced medical and surgical diagnostic treatment options for epilepsy and other disorders.”

According to the NAEC guidelines, fourth-level epilepsy centers serve as a regional or national referral facility. They provide the most complex forms of intensive neurodiagnostic monitoring as well as more extensive medical, neuropsychological and psychosocial treatment. They also offer a complete evaluation for epilepsy surgery, including intracranial electrodes, and provide a broad range of surgical procedures for epilepsy.

"As a national referral center, we treat patients with intractable epilepsy in which the seizures cannot be controlled simply by medication,” explains Dr. Geller. Thanks to innovations in the treatment of this disorder, we are now able to end seizures, without side effects, in a majority of patients."

The Saint Barnabas Comprehensive Epilepsy Program provides:

• 24-hour video/EEG monitoring and recording with surface and intracranial electrodes to diagnose and pinpoint seizure activity.
• The latest medical therapies, including clinical trials for new anti-seizure medications.
• Epilepsy surgery, including biopsy, electrode placement, vagus nerve stimulator, resection, hemispherectomy, and clinical trials for new surgical therapies such as Neuropace.
• Specialized services for children.

Epilepsy is the term given to a wide range of conditions characterized by disturbed electrical rhythms of the central nervous system. The brain, just like the heart, is an electrical organ. As such, any number of things can go wrong with the brain's electrical circuitry, resulting in seizures. When a person has more than one seizure without a clear reversible cause (such as a high fever or low blood sugar) they are said to have epilepsy.

Founded in 1998, The National Association of Epilepsy Centers establishes guidelines for services, personnel, and facilities that should be available at a specialized epilepsy center in an effort to provide consumers, government and other agencies with criteria to evaluate the quality of epilepsy programs. It then grants membership to qualifying programs. Besides Saint Barnabas, about 100 comprehensive epilepsy programs are members of the organization.

Date: May 26, 2009

Saint Barnabas Contact:  Samantha Anton, 973-322-5425

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