Help for children with epilepsy

In order to cure a rare autoimmune disease that provoked seizures and caused severe headaches, an 8-year-old girl had part of the epileptic brain affected by epilepsy removed. The radical intervention performed by Lviv neurosurgeons at St. Nicholas Children's Hospital was the only way to help the sick child.

Zlata, an 8-year-old girl from Khmelnytsky Oblast, started having epileptic seizures three years ago, first with a convulsion in her left leg. Over time, the child's condition deteriorated, and doctors diagnosed her with an extremely rare autoimmune disease - an inflammatory brain disease called Rasmussen's encephalitis. In this disease, the immune system attacks one of the hemispheres of the brain. In Zlatusia's case, it was the right one.   

Rasmussen's encephalitis affects mostly children, progresses rapidly and leads to frequent and severe epileptic seizures that are resistant to anticonvulsant therapy. The patient's prognosis is unfavourable: atrophy of the inflamed hemisphere, neurological deficits, paralysis and life-threatening illness.  

Neurologists prescribed anticonvulsants for Zlatusya, but they did not help at all. The disease progressed. Epileptic seizures occurred 20 to 40 times a day. To slow down the development of the disease and stop the seizures, neurosurgeons performed the first intervention - a functional hemispherectomy.

The operation helped and the seizures stopped, and everything was fine for a year and a half. Until Zlata began to suffer from headaches and vomiting. Only radical surgery could help. The neurosurgeons at St Nicholas Hospital of the First Medical Association of Lviv, led by Mykhailo Lovha, where one of the largest centres for paediatric neurosurgery and epilepsy surgery in Ukraine operates, undertook the operation. 

"We go for such complex interventions because this is the only chance for a child to live a full life, without seizures. The child's brain is surprisingly neuroplastic," says our neurologist Maria Pavliuk. 

Zlata has already returned to normal life. She goes back to school and does volunteer work, raising money for the needs of the Armed Forces. 

"Thank God, everything is fine. Zlatysia is an intelligent, active child, has many friends and enjoys life. There is nothing different about her now. She reads, learns poetry, counts and loves mathematics," her mother shares her daughter's success.

Surgery is considered one of the most effective methods of treating epilepsy. However, performing complex brain surgery requires jewellery precision, special equipment and, most importantly, high-quality diagnostics. Today, the greatest need of the neurosurgeons at St. Nicholas Hospital is an electroneuromyograph, which helps in a quick and effective analysis of the needs and requirements for neurodiagnostic procedures, to assess the functional state of nerves and muscles, both in neurological diseases and in traumatic injuries of the musculoskeletal system. This will greatly help doctors help young patients from all over Ukraine. Last year alone, more than 1,000 children with epilepsy and other nervous system diseases needed diagnosis and treatment.

The cost of the electroneuromyograph is UAH 2.1 million. We are raising funds among all those who care, and everyone can contribute to raising funds and saving Ukrainian children with even 1 hryvnia.