SAN ANTONIO – A new video monitoring system for epileptic patients has been helping patients at The Children's Hospital of San Antonio.
Professor of pediatrics and chief of neurology for The Children's Hospital of San Antonio, Yu-Tze Ng, has monitored a 6-year-old boy who was having trouble at school and home.
"When he is asleep, he is just going abnormal. He had one or two little seizures, but then he was deteriorating in his school work and his overall well being," Yu-Tze Ng said.
They were able to find out how to help him using the machine.
"This is not just seizures. It's seizure activity on the left side of his brain," Ng said. "We used medications to treat him."
The camera captures seizures in real time and digitally documents data from the brain.
"Their head is connected to an EEG -- Electroencephalogram," Ng said. "The electrons go on top of your skull all over, 21 channels, which is how many electrons there are. A couple go on your chest to look at the heart rate. It measures and records the brain waves at the time that the seizures are happening or even before."
The device eliminates the need for paper and pen in a digital era.
"It was a mechanical pen that would draw these squiggly lines, which is what I call these brain wave readings," Ng said.
The hospital is planning on adding more of these devices to help more children in our community.
"The most important part of catching the seizure on the brain waves is to see, where it starts from, which tells us where it potentially comes from," Ng said.