Stimulating the brain

In this episode we meet Charlie, a young man with an extremely severe epilepsy which was not responding to optimal anti-epileptic drug therapy.  His mother was an amazing lady who searched far and wide for options to help treat his epilepsy.  She learned about a way of treating epilepsy using a device called a Vagus Nerve Stimulator about the same time that I came across it at an epilepsy meeting.  At the time only one child in the UK had had the device implanted and we had to work hard to obtain this for Charlie.  In this episode we discuss how the Vagus Nerve Stimulator was developed, how we managed to obtain the treatment for Charlie (only the second child to be implanted in the UK) and the outcome for Charlie and his mum.