In an interview with Dr. Martha Morrell, Chief Medical Officer for Neuropace and Professor of Neurology at Stanford University, she talks about RNS treatment for seizures and says the unit was designed for people who have partial onset seizures.
She says the system was developed to sense seizures through small little leads or wires where the seizures begin. The system works continually, reading the brain’s electrical activity. If something out of the ordinary happens, such as the onset of a seizure, the unit will give a small pulse to the area of the brain where it is starting.
The RNS Neurostimulator contains a battery and some computer chips. It is placed under the skull without bulging and once it is there it can’t be seen or felt. The device has a radio in it that allows the doctor to use a wand which is placed over the device which is under the skin and talk to it. The device has the ability to tell the doctor what has happened, including how many seizures or electrical activities it has read. The device is also able to tell the doctor if it was used for stimulation or if the discharge was treated by the stimulation. The information can also be transmitted to a secure website so that doctors can access the information from their home or office. It gives them the ability to review all of the EEGs that have been gathered from past months or years.
Patients Can Transfer their Own Data via the Internet
The patient also receives a wand that connects to a laptop computer that they can take home with them. The patient has the ability to pull information off of the device and transmit it to the website, allowing the doctor to see the information. If a person feels that they have had a seizure, they can use the wand and send the information to their doctor so that the doctor can see if a seizure did indeed happen. Typically a person who has the RNS Neurostimulator will routinely use the wand to gather information and submit it to the website either daily, every few days, or weekly so that their doctor can see how things are going.
The wand gathers the information from the device, but the doctor is also able to send information through the wand telling the device what to do. Depending on what information the doctor sees, he or she may want to change the type of electrical stimulation or may tell the device to stimulate different types of electrical activity.
The RNS system differs from the VNS system in that the VNS stimulates a nerve that goes through the neck to the brain, at regular intervals. The RNS system stimulates only when something happens. It is constantly watching what is going on and acts only when something abnormal occurs. This is called responsive, in that it only stimulates in response to a seizure beginning.
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