Epilepsy:

EEG Neurofeedback Training for Epilepsy

I am a 18 year old girl and I have had uncontrolled epilepsy since the age of two. I have therefore taken anticonvulsant drugs for 16 years and even though I have tried lots of different drugs, I have only had two periods, each of 10 months, when the drugs worked and I was seizure free. I have also suffered quite a lot of unpleasant side effects from the drugs.

My family and I read about Neurofeedback in the Sunday Times and thought that it may be able to help me and we were very lucky in that Great Ormond Street Hospital agreed to refer me to Dr Kaur and my GP agreed to fund the treatment.

After 23 sessions of Neurofeedback treatment, I have been able to reduce both of my drugs. I was taking 600mg of Oxcarbazepine twice a day and this has now reduced to 450mg twice daily. My other drug, Epilim has also reduced from 1OOmg at night and 2OOmg in the morning to just the morning dose. I now feel more confident and less anxious and more able to cope with the pressures of my `A' level studies. As well as my two sessions a week with Dr Kaur, I also now practise getting my brain into the same state when I have the Neurofeedback treatment and feel that I am now able to control some of the auras I get throughout the day. The auras have reduced in frequency from 9 a day to between 1 - 4 a day and the length and severity have also decreased.

At the moment, I am having 1-2 seizures per week (although during the time my medication was being adjusted, I did have more) compared to 4 - 5 per week at the beginning of last year.

I have found that my school work and concentration levels have also improved. When I first visited Dr Kaur, she carried out a test for Control and Consistency of Attention and this she repeated after session 20. The results of the second test showed a good improvement.

At the moment, I am only part way through the treatment and I am therefore very confident that I will be able to have control over my seizures and even perhaps come off medication.