Epilepsy Monitoring Unit at Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center Specializes in Diagnosis and Treatment of Seizures

If you’ve been having unexplained seizures, whether it’s sudden jerking movements of your arms and legs to suddenly falling into a haze and confusion, you may have epilepsy. You would be far from alone. More than 2.4 million people who are already diagnosed, with 150,000 people finding out they have it each year.

Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center was the first in the county to introduce a dedicated Epilepsy Monitoring Unit. We offer Long-Term Video Monitoring, where the patient is continuously observed on camera while their brainwave activity is tracked. This will tell our team what triggers a seizure, decipher if the seizure is epileptic or psychogenic, and if it is epilepsy, establish which specific type.

This type of specialized monitoring can detect the epileptic activity that a routine electroencephalogram (EEG) cannot.

Usually, patients spend three to five days in our unit, filled with dedicated staff, including technologists, nurses, and doctors.

A team of three neurologists from the Palm Beach Neuroscience Institute (PBNI) including Dr. Pedro Hernandez-Frau and Dr. Juan Carlos Muniz also provide epilepsy care as epileptologists on-staff at the Epilepsy Monitoring Unit at Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center. In addition, Dr. Sujai “Ron” Nath is a neurohospitalist with PBNI who has an interest in epilepsy care.

“We have board-certified neurologists specializing in epilepsy care at our Epilepsy Monitoring Unit. The unit evaluates patients with seizure like episodes or any type of seizures to either confirm or clarify diagnosis,” said Dr. Hernandez-Frau.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), although many underlying disease mechanisms can lead to epilepsy, the cause of the disease is still unknown in about 50 percent of cases globally. Dr. Hernandez-Frau points out about 30 percent of patients diagnosed with seizures do not have seizures and their episodes are something that looks like seizures.

“At the Epilepsy Monitoring Unit we focus on gathering more information to evaluate other potential treatment options.”

Dr. Hernandez-Frau specializes in intractable epilepsy for drug-resistant epilepsy, epilepsy surgery evaluation and long-term video-electroencephalography (EEG) monitoring. Dr. Muniz provides ICU continuous monitoring, long-term video-electroencephalography (EEG) monitoring, and intractable epilepsy, and in addition, at PBNI, headache and Botox for migraines care. Additionally, both Dr. Hernandez-Frau and Dr. Muniz are bilingual and able to communicate with Spanish speaking patients. Dr. Nath has additional areas of interest in headaches and multiple sclerosis treatments as well as experience in intraoperative monitoring, a process involving a board-certified neurophysiologist monitoring a patient’s brain, spinal cord and nerves at risk during surgery as well as performing tests to measure central nervous system function during a procedure.

For more information on Advanced Neurological Care available at Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center visit pbgmc.com/services/neurosciences or call 561-622-1411. To learn more about the Palm Beach Neuroscience Institute visit: PBNI.com or call 561-882-6214.