‘I don’t even recognize myself’: London woman now seizure-free after rare epilepsy treatment at LHSC

A London woman is no longer suffering from seizures after rare epilepsy treatment. CTV’s Reta Ismail with the details.

Christine Kauzen is astonished as she reviews medical scans with her surgeon Dr. David Steven — that show a device in her skull.

The 26-year-old is the first epilepsy patient to have a rare procedure at London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC), where a Responsive Neurostimulation (RNS) device was surgically implanted into her skull to treat her seizures. Prior to this, she suffered from severe epilepsy.

“I would have cluster seizures, so it’d be about three days of seizures, and I could have about a dozen seizures a day,” said Kauzen.

She says she did not respond well to medication, and doctors determined the part of her brain that was causing the seizures could not removed. That made her a good candidate for RNS.

“Responsive Neurostimulation is a system where the electrode is implanted in the brain,” explained Dr. David Steven, Neurosurgeon at London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC).

030625_Epilepsy treatment doctor London LHSC hospital brain surgery Christine Kauzen, rare epilepsy treatment patient, alongside her surgeon, Dr. David Steven inside LHSC in London, Ontario. (Reta Ismail/CTV News London)

“It measures seizure activity, and if the little computer inside the device detects that a seizure is happening it can deliver an impulse to the brain, very much like a heart pacer would work.”

Since her treatment last July, Kauzen says her life has dramatically changed.

“I was a totally different human again, I don’t even recognize myself now, I am trying to find new ways of life and relearn how to live”, said Kauzen.

Dr. Steven says the device is only approved in the United States, and Christine is one of a handful of people to have this procedure done in Canada. His team advocated for this treatment and applied through Health Canada’s Special Access Program, but he added that not everyone is a candidate for RNS.

“Some patients have a great result, like Christine, [but] there’s other patients where it doesn’t work so well and it’s hard to predict ahead of time who that will be. One of the other benefits is that sometimes patients like Christine, we actually discover that the seizure [is] actually coming all from one side [of the brain],” explained Dr. Steven.

Dr. Steven says the next step is to get the procedure approved in Canada, and then it will become more widely available.