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Article: Epileptic PET probes: brain imaging is coming of age in the evaluation of infants and children with uncontrolled seizures. (includes related article on positron emission tomography)
- Article from:
- Science News
- Article date:
- April 30, 1988
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1988 Science Service, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Epileptic PET Probes
Ryan Peterson is living proof that half a brain can be better than a whole brain.
Ryan was only 8 hours old when his body began to convulse from his first brain seizure. Over the next few months doctors gave him a variety of anticonvulsant drugs, but his tiny brain continued to churn out seizures at the rate of 15 to 20 per day. If Ryan's internal electrical storm continued, he, like other infants with uncontrollable epilepsy, would probably die of seizure-related complications by age 10.
Faced with this prospect, Ryan's parents brought him to the University of California at Los Angeles School of Medicine, where a team of ...