Birmingham Complex Epilepsy and Surgery Service
Our nationally renowned clinical epilepsy unit provides care, support and information for people with epilepsy, both newly diagnosed and long-standing. Many patients with complex epilepsy are referred to us from other centres to benefit from our expertise.
We see patients in our general neurology, specialist epilepsy and specialist epilepsy surgery clinics. We liaise with other specialties and GPs to provide all-round care, including investigations, diagnoses and the latest treatments, plus information and support.
Our team consists of neurologists, neurophysiologists, neurosurgeons, epilepsy specialist nurses, electroencephalography (EEG) technicians, neuropsychologists and neuroradiologists. They also collaborate with cardiac physiology to assess undiagnosed blackouts and with neuropsychiatry for non-epileptic attack disorder.
We carry out pre-surgery assessment, including invasive monitoring, and all epilepsy operations for patients whose medication is unsuccessful and who still have frequent seizures. We also carry out trials of new medications and new surgical procedures.
We have close links with the University of Birmingham, which researches the latest technology to help us to diagnose, assess and treat epilepsy. Our unit is very experienced in epilepsy surgery and has a long record of assessing anti-epileptic drugs. We offer vagal nerve stimulation (VNS) and more recently have been investigating deep brain stimulation (DBS) for epilepsy as well as specialised assessment of the electrical activity of the brain.
Last reviewed: 07 June 2023