16-Month-Old Baby With Uncontrolled Seizure Attacks Gets Relief After Rare Surgery

A 16-month-old baby in India recently underwent a rare surgery to treat uncontrolled seizure attacks.

The child had started having seizures "from almost the time he was born and this problem only got worse within the next few months," Dr K Sridhar, who led the team of doctors that performed the surgery, told media outlet the Print.

The successful surgery took place in a hospital in the southern city of Chennai. A 15-member team of doctors had performed the rare procedure in the Institute of Neurosciences & Spinal Disorders, the hospital announced in a statement Friday.

Explaining the child's medical condition, consultant pediatric neurologist Dr. Arulmozhi said, "The baby had a complicated birth history and developed severe asphyxia soon after."

The child was admitted in the Neonatal ICU for 28 days and was on ventilation for four days, he said. The date when the child was admitted has not been revealed.

Doctors said by the time the child was 3 months old, he suffered 40-50 episodes of seizures per day. He was administered up to four drugs, but showed no improvement.

“At the age of 1 year and 4 months the child was on 5 anti-epilepsy medication but he was still experiencing 40 plus attacks per day. When seizures or epileptic attacks do not come under control with medications, we must explore the possibility of a surgical solution. It is imperative to act quickly in children as their growing brain will be affected by continued seizures, which can result in poor development," Arulmozhi was quoted as saying.

Dr. K Sridhar and his team found via an MRI that the child’s brain was badly affected by the birth asphyxia. The doctors decided a surgery will be performed on the baby that would stop the spread of the seizures from one side to the other and therefore reduce the attacks, Outlook India reported.

"It was a difficult situation as the child’s brain was not properly developed and also had structural issues by birth. After multiple sessions of discussion with us, the parents gave their consent for the surgery. The surgery – Anterior Corpus Callosotomy is a rare procedure to be performed on children so small. As this was the only option available to help the child, the surgery was performed," Dr. Sridhar said, adding the procedure "involves going between the 2 halves of the brain, delicately separating them and then dividing the connecting nerve fibres. This was done under high magnification and we had continuous recording of the EEG done during the surgery.”

Dr Sridhar said the baby has recovered well and the seizure attacks have now completely stopped.

"His need for seizure drugs has also come down considerably. We are proud to say that we have been able to help this child and his parents, not only in the fact that he has become seizure-free but also to give the family an opportunity to have a good quality of life," he said.