Neuromodulation

And then there are some other types of what we call neuromodulation. These are surgeries to help control seizures bu, aren’t necessarily going to completely stop them, but help control them. And the one that’s been around the longest is something called the vagal nerve stimulator. This is a pacemaker device that’s implanted under the skin and the pacemaker is, or there’s a wire then this run underneath the skin to the neck to a nerve in the neck called the vagus nerve and it sends an impulse to that nerve and then through a black box mechanism, nobody knows exactly how it works. It sends a signal up into the brain that helps control seizures. And on average maybe a 50% reduction in seizure frequency. Some patients more, some patients less. The advantage of the vagal nerve stimulators, it’s not another pill, they don’t have to remember to take it, and it has an on demand feature, meaning you can take a magnet and actually if you can tell a seizure is coming on, you can swipe the magnet on the device. And what that’ll do is that’ll cause the device to turn on, which can abbreviate or prevent a seizure. There’s another device that’s actually an implanted in the skull and an electrode is actually put into the seizure focus itself, and that device will detect a seizure and actually zap the brain and prevent the seizure from occurring. The challenge with that device, it’s called the neuropace device, is that you have to be really sure where or fairly certain where the seizures coming from before you can implant it.