Health Spotlight | Rare brain surgery stops seizures

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — When little Reagan Cross was only a year old, she underwent brain surgery after 6-8 months of suffering 200 seizures a day.

“During her workup, we discovered that she had a congenital condition called hemimegalencephaly. That’s where one half of the brain, the hemisphere, is very abnormal,” said Dr. Mark Lee, chief of pediatric neurosurgery at Christus Children’s Hospital.

Worse yet, this congenital condition, called cortical dysplasia, caused the right side of her brain to stop functioning entirely.

“The potential to control the seizures is actually a very dramatic operation called a hemispherectomy,” Lee said.

In the old days, doctors would have removed the entire damaged half of the brain.

“Currently, with newer technologies, we actually go in through a much smaller opening and disconnect that whole half of the brain, so it’s still there, that abnormal hemisphere, but it’s not connected to her,” Lee explained.

Lee says this newer surgery paves the way to a faster recovery, and there is much less blood loss. Most exciting was what happened post-surgery.

“She immediately stopped having seizures,” Lee said.

Finally, with this surgery, there is less risk of the child getting water on the brain and requiring a shunt. The five-hour surgery gave Reagan and her family a new chance at life.

Anti-seizure medications were not effective in the long run, and the dramatic surgery was the recommended choice. Lee made an incision in the head like a reverse question mark and created a window in the bone to repair the brain lobe.

Reagan is now 3 years old and healthy.

This story was created from a script aired on WISH-TV. Health Spotlight is presented by Community Health Network.