A few days after the second operation, the girl returned home. After rehabilitation, she will return to her favorite activities, and in the future she dreams of becoming a doctor.
Justyna is now 12 years old. Until 9 months, she was a completely healthy baby. One day, the mother noticed how her daughter began to shake her arms strangely during the game. Over time, the attacks happened every night. The body of the baby twisted, and the muscles tensed. Then pediatricians could not establish the cause of the seizure. Later, the child was diagnosed with epilepsy and prescribed medication. However, they did not help.
For 11 years, Yustyna’s relatives searched for the cause of the illness. Dozens of doctors visited. But it’s all in vain. The attacks only intensified. They even took me abroad for treatment. And when they returned to Ukraine, they decided to seek help from the specialists of the neurosurgery department of St. Mykola’s Children’s Hospital.
After a complete examination of Yustyna, the doctors realized that there is no single focal point in the brain that provokes seizures. Therefore, it is necessary to clearly define the entire zone of pathological activity, then look for options for surgical treatment. And for this, an ordinary encephalogram, when electrodes that monitor brain activity are attached to the head, is not enough. Monitoring should be done with an open mind. Therefore, the main operation is preceded by a complex diagnostic one.
Specialists managed to place electrodes on the area in the hemisphere where the pathological activity originates, and to determine the epileptogenic area. Subsequently, already during the second surgical intervention, the neurosurgeons successfully removed the entire pathological zone. Yustyna no longer suffers from convulsive attacks – they have stopped. A few days after the second operation, the girl returned home.
American neurosurgeon Luke Tomych helped Ukrainian colleagues perform a surgical intervention that is rare in Ukraine. He visited a children’s hospital within the framework of the charitable mission of the BF “Razom for Ukraine” Co-Pilot project. Came here already for the third time. During this visit, together with neurosurgeons of the hospital, he consulted and operated on 10 children. The American specialist speaks favorably of the work of Ukrainian doctors. “The level of Ukrainian neurosurgeons is high. Especially now, during the war, they see more than anyone else in the world. It’s really interesting to see how they innovate. How are patients treated during the war,” says Luke Tomych.