The NYU Comprehensive Epilepsy Center is one of the largest centers in the United States. There are over 30 monitored beds and a dedicated four-bed monitored unit for adult invasive intracranial monitoring. Well over 250 epilepsy surgeries are performed at NYU yearly. Dr. Doyle performs all of the adult and adolescent cases and Dr. Weiner performs epilepsy surgery on the younger pediatric population. A multidisciplinary epilepsy surgery conference is held each Tuesday from 3:30 to 4:30 pm.
The Epilepsy Center is planning the acquisition of a dedicated clinical MEG system in the coming year to augment the research MEG already at NYU. SPECT scans, computer analytic techniques applied to EEG signals, and neuropsychological and neurobehavioral studies are important research interests within the Epilepsy Center.
The full range of epilepsy surgeries, including multistage surgery, corpus callosotomy, hemispherectomy, vagal nerve stimulation, stereotactic depth electrodes, subdural electrodes, tailored and standard temporal lobectomies, hippocampectomies, subpial transactions and awake craniotomies with intra-operative functional mapping are routinely performed. An initiative to begin clinical trials of deep brain stereotactic therapy for refractory epilepsy is already in place.
Dr. Werner Doyle completed the NYU neurosurgery training program in 1991 and went on to fellowship training in epilepsy surgery at Yale before returning to NYU in 1993. His early interest in stereotaxy and functional neurosurgery as a resident led him to develop his own interactive computer software for the Leksell and BRW stereotactic frames. He also developed and built a frameless stereotactic computer system that is routinely used in the epilepsy surgery he performs. Collaboration with industry has yielded innovative custom electrodes that can be used in less invasive epilepsy surgery. His other interests include vagal nerve stimulation for the treatment of epilepsy, depression, and migraine.
He is a member of the research team that anticipates using in vivo microvoltammetry in humans undergoing epilepsy surgery to measure neurotransmitters in real time, to characterize and localize epileptogenic substrates of the brain. He works very closely with epileptologists, neuropsychologists and neurophysiologists involved in the clinical and experimental initiatives of the Epilepsy Center. He is often asked to participate in editorial reviews of epilepsy-related articles and is a member of the advisory boards of several epilepsy-related organizations. He is currently reviewing his series of 1,500 surgical cases for epilepsy performed over the last eight years, one of the largest contemporary epilepsy surgical series performed by one surgeon. Dr. Doyle is also the Director of Epilepsy Surgery at The Institute of Neurology and Neurosurgery at Saint Barnabas Medical Center in New Jersey, a satellite of the NYU center.
