Saskatchewan residents living with epilepsy can look forward to greater access to monitoring and diagnostic services with a highly specialized telemetry unit at Saskatoon’s Royal University Hospital (RUH).

The provincial government has committed to $1.35 million in operational funding each year starting in 2020-21 to establish a four-bed Epilepsy Monitoring Unit.

The Royal University Hospital Foundation (RUHF) will begin efforts to fundraise $1.2 million for the cost of capital and equipment.

SHA Vice President of Provincial Programs Corey Miller.

"It’s a really exciting announcement for our patients as this type of a monitoring system for people living with seizure disorders gives us the ability to diagnose and treat patients that are living with seizure disorder and epilepsy and give them the opportunity for treatments to allow them to go on and have a high quality of life."

Many people with epilepsy are able to control seizures with medication.

However, telemetry is an important tool to determine if patients living with epilepsy will benefit from surgery to alleviate seizures and greatly improve their lives.

The telemetry unit will monitor the electrical activity in a patient’s brain over an extended time to determine if surgery would benefit the patient.

The telemetry unit will include dedicated epilepsy monitoring equipment and cameras, allowing physicians to conduct readings and assessments at the patient’s bedside. 

Epilepsy monitoring is currently provided at RUH, but the dedicated unit will greatly improve access to services.

"This telemetry unit is an important tool for our clinical team and helping us diagnose and treat patients with epilepsy and seizure disorders to alleviate their seizures. This monitoring system will allow us to determine where their seizure activity is coming from in their brain and allow us to work with our clinical teams to remove that area."

"Having a dedicated unit allows the people, that are on this unit and be higher quality of life and privacy because when you’re having this type of assessment you’re often in that room for four to five days, having a dedicated unit keeps those patients with light conditions together and allows them to have this type of an assessment done in a much more dignified way"

Two beds equipped for pediatric epilepsy telemetry services will also become available in fall 2019 with the opening of the Jim Pattison Children’s Hospital. 

These beds will be available for children to receive telemetry services as required.

Approximately 10,500 people in Saskatchewan are living with epilepsy, 700 of whom are children.

To donate to the telemetry unit, visit the RUHF web site.