St. Peter's Hospital: "Epilepsy & Sleep Center eases the ’treatment bottleneck’ one year after opening"

 [Rapportian] St. Peter's Hospital (President Yoon, Kangjun) announced on the 6th that, within one year of opening its Epilepsy & Sleep Center, it has performed some 680 video EEG studies and more than 40 epilepsy operations.

St. Peter's Hospital opened its Epilepsy & Sleep Center in April last year with the goal of building a ‘fast track for specialized epilepsy treatment’. The center is led by professor-level physicians including Hong Seung-bong, a neurology specialist serving as president of the Korean Epilepsy Center Society and head of the Epilepsy Support Center, and neurosurgeon Yoon, Kangjun, President of the hospital. It is the first in Korea to offer a one-stop system covering testing, admission, surgery and treatment.

In April this year the center expanded its video EEG and sleep study rooms to seven, giving it one of the largest facilities of its kind in Korea. It is equipped with advanced testing systems including Cadwell and Natus NDX. Six dedicated EEG and sleep technologists are on site 24 hours a day in three shifts, so testing can be performed during a patient’s usual sleeping hours, and same-day interpretation allows treatment to begin the following day. Through specialized education and training, the EEG technologists have EEG analysis skills at the level of a resident physician, and they can also interpret state-of-the-art magnetoencephalography (MEG) used for epilepsy surgery.

On the strength of these capabilities, the center achieved clinical results including more than 950 video EEG and sleep studies in one year. Video EEG for diagnosing epilepsy is carried out at an average of 60 cases a month, and drug therapy and surgery following diagnosis are also being performed actively.

Hong Seung-bong, Director of the Epilepsy & Sleep Center at St. Peter's Hospital, said, “Our goal is to provide epilepsy patients with world-class epilepsy care at the St. Peter's Hospital Epilepsy & Sleep Center.”

When other hospitals and clinics refer patients for video EEG and sleep studies, the Epilepsy & Sleep Center at St. Peter's Hospital operates a cooperative framework that links same-day admission, testing and sharing of results in a single rapid, one-stop pathway. Since opening, the center has performed testing and coordinated follow-up treatment for many patients referred from other hospitals, including Asan Medical Center. It also collaborates on brain imaging and on epilepsy care and surgery with medical teams at Severance Hospital, Gangnam Severance Hospital, Seoul National University Bundang Hospital and Inje University Haeundae Paik Hospital.

The hospital is also actively engaged in support activities for epilepsy patients. St. Peter's Hospital provides caregiving cost support for video EEG testing for low-income epilepsy patients and operates a 60-million-won fund to help cover surgical costs for patients with intractable epilepsy.

Hong Seung-bong, Director of the Epilepsy & Sleep Center at St. Peter's Hospital, said, “The most important goal of the Epilepsy & Sleep Center at St. Peter's Hospital is to close the gaps in epilepsy care in Korea and improve access to treatment.” He added, “In particular, we aim to build a system in which patients with intractable epilepsy can receive testing and treatment in the shortest possible time, and in which patients with sleep disorders undergo thorough, accurate sleep studies that follow their usual sleep habits, with flawless interpretation of the results.”