At the Cleveland Clinic Epilepsy Center, we strongly believe that the burden of epilepsy extends beyond a “seizure count” and seizure freedom, and that the impact of the care we provide-either medical or surgical- should be long-lasting, and should extend beyond simply “treating seizures”. As a result of this belief, the Outcomes Research Program was established in 2008 to provide a systematic long-term follow-up of patients undergoing epilepsy surgery, and to establish a mechanism for a comprehensive 360º assessment of our treatment outcomes with every outpatient clinic visit, including an evaluation of quality of life, mood, psychosocial functioning, as well as seizure frequency and severity.
View our Epilepsy Center Outcomes
Seizure outcomes
During every outpatient clinic visit, we measure seizure freedom or frequency (how often are seizures happening) so we can determine whether treatment is controlling or reducing the occurrence of seizures and the extent of such an improvement. We also measure seizure severity (how strong are the seizures) so we can judge whether our treatment is at least making seizures milder (less harmful) while we continue to work on eliminating them. This is done both in the rather small group of patients with drug-resistant seizures who need brain surgery to eliminate seizures (surgical group), and in the larger group treated mainly with anti-seizure medications (medical group).
