Fisheries and wildlife associate professor Shawn Riley lost his son, Aaron Riley, earlier this summer in an accident believed to be caused by epilepsy — a neurological disorder characterized by seizures.
His accidental drowning is believed to have been caused by his illness but has not been confirmed by an autopsy yet.
Aaron Riley’s body was found July 11 in Raystown Lake, in Huntingdon County, Pa. He was on a class field trip for an internship program and staying near the lake.
Aaron Riley suffered from partial seizure disorder, a type of epilepsy that required medication and treatment.
He had to travel to Ann Arbor because of the lack of treatment options in the Lansing area, Shawn Riley said.
MSU HealthTeam and Lansing’s Sparrow Hospital opened an epilepsy monitoring unit in February, hoping to provide patients with treatment closer to home.
“We have quite a bit of people with intractable epilepsy that do not respond to medication, and instead of sending them outside with a lot of inconvenience to them and to (their) family, we have the expertise required now to just do this here in town,” associate professor of neurology Mounzer Kassab said.
Shawn Riley said a resource such as this would have been more convenient for his family and could be beneficial to others suffering from the disorder.
“It’s a step forward to helping people with epilepsy to deal with their challenges … day-to-day, month-to-month,” he said.
Assistant department manager for Sparrow Hospital’s Neuro Step-Down Unit Malinda Herrera said the unit got off to a slow start when it first opened, but has become very busy since.
The unit now has about 16 patients who were admitted because they had tried several medications and still continued to have seizures.
Patients are monitored for 24 hours a day for several days by testing brain wave activity.
During the monitoring period, doctors typically decrease their patients’ medicine intake, allowing them to have seizures.
The idea is to use video of a patient’s brain activity during a seizure to try to pinpoint where in the brain the seizure started, Kassab said.
After patients have been under watch for several days, doctors will determine whether or not they will require additional medication or surgery.
“If we’re successful in (pinpointing the starting location of the seizures), the next phase is to remove that part from the brain by doing an additional series of tests to look exactly at that area,” Kassab said.
When deciding whether or not a patient is qualified for surgery, doctors must take into consideration how close the area to be removed is to other important areas in the brain, such as those affecting memory, language or motor function.
Kassab said several of the unit’s current patients have an advanced stage of epilepsy and might qualify for surgery.
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