Treatment of medically refractory seizures with responsive neurostimulation: 2 pediatric cases

The responsive neurostimulation (RNS) system, an adjunctive treatment for pharmacoresistant partial-onset seizures with 1 or 2 foci, has been available to patients aged 18 years or older since the device’s FDA approval in 2013. Herein, the authors describe their off-label application of this technology in 2 pediatric patients and the consequent therapeutic benefit without surgical complications or treatment side effects. A 14-year-old nonambulatory, nonverbal male with severe developmental delay was considered for RNS therapy for medically and surgically refractory epilepsy with bilateral seizure onsets in the setting of a normal radiological examination and a known neuropathological diagnosis of type I cortical dysplasia. The RNS system was implanted with strip electrodes placed on the left lateral frontal and right lateral temporal neocortex. At 19 months’ follow-up, cortical stimulation resulted in sustained reduction in both seizure frequency—3 seizures per day down from 15 to 30 per day—and seizure s...