Reports of people who have seizures after vaping have raised serious questions about the safety of electronic cigarettes, which have grown in popularity in recent years.
The first Vagus Nerve Stimulator (VNS) was implanted in 1988, as a therapeutic option for medically intractable epilepsy, when elective epilepsy surgery was not appropriate.
As the number of implanted vagus nerve stimulators grows, so does the need to remove or revise the devices.
Which is a little tricky, because of the spiral stimulating electrodes, wrapped around the nerve.
Especially if the VNS treatment has proven ineffective.
And of course, what goes in, must come out.
Anyway you look at it, there’s more surgery involved.
You probably already know that aspartame is a no-no. But just in case you weren’t sure why, here are the reasons and the scandal…
For 16 years, the FDA refused to approve aspartame.
The FDA’s own toxicologist told Congress that: “Without a shadow of a doubt, aspartame can cause brain tumors and brain cancer and violated the Delaney Amendment, which forbids putting anything in food that is known to cause cancer.” — FDA Toxicologist, Dr. Adrian Gross
Long-term use of Xcopri was safe and reduced seizures by more than 90% in adults with uncontrolled focal seizures, according to results of an open-label extension study published in Neurology.
“Compared with 2008, costs for brand-name anti seizure meds (ASMs), rose from approximately $2,800 to $10,700 per year in 2018, while costs for generic brand ASMs dropped $800 to $460. As a result, many generic ASMs cost about 10 times less than their brand-name counterparts…”
We are in a mental health crisis in this community. And not enough is being done to avert it.
According to a peer-reviewed journal article from Epilepsy and Behavior, statistics concluded that people with epilepsy are 22 times more likely to commit suicide than the general population.
Drug-resistant epilepsy with uncontrolled severe seizures — despite state-of-the-art medical treatment — continues to be a major problem for up to 30% of patients with epilepsy.
Although drug resistance may fluctuate in the course of treatment, for most patients, drug resistance seems to be continuous.
Unfortunately, traditional antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) don’t seem to prevent or reverse drug resistance in most patients.
However, some new add-on AED therapies have shown as much as 50% in seizure reduction.
What if you could predict an oncoming seizure in time for you stop it? Or even prevent it?
That day may be coming sooner than you think, thanks to these seven new technologies.
You’ll learn what they are, how they work and how far along they are.
In April 2017, a man named Drew Calver thought he was dying. A heart attack had pinned him to the floor of his bedroom. His neighbor took him to St. David’s Medical Center in Austin, where he was successfully treated.
Weeks later, he received a bill from the hospital: That’ll be $108,951.31, please. St. David’s was out of network on his insurance, and Aetna had only paid $55,840 of the total $164,941 bill for his treatment.