Epilepsy impacts about one percent of the U.S. population; however, it’s one of the most common neurological diseases. Meanwhile, a new epilepsy monitoring unit at Cayuga Medical Center in Ithaca is helping adult patients dealing with seizures and other issues get correctly diagnosed.
Dr. Cynthia Correll is a neurologist who can tell you a lot about what’s going on inside your brain. She’s the director of the new epilepsy monitoring unit at Cayuga Medical Center.
“Getting misdiagnosed with epilepsy is unfortunately common and vice versa. People get misdiagnosed with other disorders, and it turns out they have epilepsy,” said Correll.
But that’s why the new epilepsy monitoring unit and just a few others like it across the state are so important. Medical professionals can spend a few days analyzing brain activity of patients experiencing symptoms or warning signs of epilepsy.
The unit helps ensure patients are getting treated correctly should they need surgery or specific medication.
“There are patients that absolutely need this in order to get the right diagnosis and to get the right treatment, so to me, it seems absolutely vital to have one of these units, whether you’re going to be accessing it because it’s local or you’re coming from further away where we have better access and you can get in a little faster,” said Correll.
The advancement of technology has also helped with accuracy.
“We are really advancing our technology a lot,” said Correll. “We can always correlate, what’s happening with you clinically with what we’re seeing on the brainwaves.”
When it comes to helping patients with neurological issues, Correll says more doctors are needed around the world.
“There is a shortage across the United States and across the globe of neurologists. And part of this, we just have not trained enough neurologists in the past, especially with our aging population and the number of diseases that increase as we age,” said Correll.
Still, it’s important for those battling epilepsy and other brain issues to know doctors are available upstate.
“To me, it’s really fulfilling to be able to improve the quality of life actually go back to spending time with their family, go back to work, when their disease process gets better and they have the correct diagnosis,” Correll said.
Correll said the EMU is the only epilepsy diagnostic center in the Southern Tier region. The new unit will reduce the time patients wait for an evaluation that typically takes about three days.
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