Dedicated to bringing extraordinary technologies and treatments forward to the neurosciences community. We are proud to share some groundbreaking advancements such as laser ablation surgery or deep brain stimulation, which deliver pinpoint precision and reduced risk in brain surgeries.
New Frontiers for Neurosciences Research (1/28/2020) - Jane and John Justin Neurosciences Center at Cook Children’s recently finalized a research relationship with the Department of Bioengineering at The University of Texas at Arlington. Funded by the Dodson Neuro Research Endowment, the Cook Children’s Neurosciences Research Center will add postdoctoral research fellows, Ph.D. students and interns to a growing team dedicated to neuroscience research. Through this collaboration, Cook Children’s will welcome investigators … Continue reading New Frontiers for Neurosciences Research
Renewed Hope: Novel Treatments for Spinal Muscular Atrophy Improving Outcomes (10/16/2019) - Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is a rare autosomal recessive neuromuscular disease that presents as progressive muscle weakness secondary to loss of lower motor neurons in the brainstem and spinal cord. With an incidence of 1 in 10,000 live births, SMA is the most common genetic cause of death in infancy, but new treatments may soon change this poor prognosis. SMA occurs when a child … Continue reading Renewed Hope: Novel Treatments for Spinal Muscular Atrophy Improving Outcomes
New-Onset Seizure Clinic Seeks to Decrease Wait Time for Initial Evaluation (7/11/2019) - A child’s first unprovoked seizure is one of the most common problems referred to pediatric neurologists. This affects up to 40,000 children each year. While most of these patients will never have a second seizure, it is a frightening time for the family as they await diagnostic workup and neurology consultation. To help expedite care, Cook Children’s Neurosciences has opened a New-Onset Seizure Clinic … Continue reading New-Onset Seizure Clinic Seeks to Decrease Wait Time for Initial Evaluation
Physiatry Addition to Cook Children’s Comprehensive Neurorehabilitation Program (6/18/2019) - Cook Children’s Neurosciences Center has long provided comprehensive rehabilitation services to children through our state-of-the-art Neurorehabilitation Unit, Motion Lab, and multispecialty clinics for cerebral palsy, spasticity, movement disorders, stroke, and neuromuscular disease. Starting August 2019, Cook Children’s Jane and John Justin Neurosciences Center will expand our neurorehabilitation services with the addition of Pediatric Physiatrist Kristen Taylor , D.O., Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PM&R), further bolstering … Continue reading Physiatry Addition to Cook Children’s Comprehensive Neurorehabilitation Program
A Tandem Approach to Treating Craniosynostosis (6/18/2019) - At Cook Children’s, we feel the best way to correct a birth defect called craniosynostosis is with a little teamwork. The sutures on an infant’s skull are active areas of skull growth designed to accommodate the rapid growth of the neonate brain. In the first six months the head will grow about ½ to 1 inch per month and then from six to 12 … Continue reading A Tandem Approach to Treating Craniosynostosis
BE FAST to Recognize the Signs of Pediatric Stroke (5/21/2019) - Cook Children’s Stroke and Thrombosis Program co-directors Marcela Torres, M.D., Medical Director, Hematology Program, and Fernando Acosta Jr., M.D., Neurology, talk about the causes of pediatric stroke and the importance of the two specialties collaborating to improve awareness, diagnosis, treatment and risk of recurrence.
Advancements in Cancer Care: Brain Tumors and Children (4/8/2019) - The multidisciplinary Neuro-Oncology team at Cook Children’s is equipped to meet the unique medical needs of children plagued with brain tumors. According to the National Institutes of Health, brain tumors make up about 30 percent of all pediatric cancers. Whether treating tumors such as brainstem gliomas, neurofibromatosis or medulloblastoma, Cook Children’s remains committed to providing patients with compassionate care and innovative treatment solutions. Brain … Continue reading Advancements in Cancer Care: Brain Tumors and Children
Pioneering Surgery Disconnects Left Side of Brain To Stop Child’s Daily Seizures (3/29/2019) - Owen’s story begins at 8 months of age when his parents noticed weakness on his right side. His parents knew something wasn’t right with their son. They made an appointment for Monday with their pediatrician, but over the weekend they became afraid when they noticed Owen stopped using the right side of his body. His parents rushed Owen to the nearest emergency room in Cleburne, … Continue reading Pioneering Surgery Disconnects Left Side of Brain To Stop Child’s Daily Seizures
Ensuring Quality Care for Adults With Rare Genetic Epilepsies (3/26/2019) - As recently as 10 years ago, many patients with difficult to control epilepsy syndromes – such as Lennox Gastaut Syndrome – had no explanation for the cause of their epilepsy. Worse than not knowing the cause, disorders such as Lennox Gastaut and other rare epilepsies had almost no treatments specifically studied for them and research was limited. Over the last decade, improvements in genetic … Continue reading Ensuring Quality Care for Adults With Rare Genetic Epilepsies
Comprehensive Surgical Evaluations for Epilepsy (3/26/2019) - Pediatric epilepsy specialists at Cook Children’s aim to efficiently complete complex surgical evaluations for patients and their families, allowing optimal treatment to begin quickly. Epilepsy syndromes in children differ greatly from those that manifest in adulthood. While adult-onset epilepsy often results from symptomatic causes (i.e., head injury or stroke), pediatric epilepsy can present as isolated seizures that may not recur, as part of a … Continue reading Comprehensive Surgical Evaluations for Epilepsy
New Yoga Therapy Program at Cook Children’s Center for Pain Management (1/8/2019) - Yoga is thought to have originated in India nearly 26,000 years ago, but only began to emerge in the United States in the 1960s. Today, yoga is taking the country by storm. You don’t have to look far to find a yoga class available in most community centers, health clubs, parks, senior adult communities, schools and a number of new yoga studios that have … Continue reading New Yoga Therapy Program at Cook Children’s Center for Pain Management
Novel Approach to Pediatric Pain Management (11/5/2018) - Chronic pain is one of the most common conditions encountered by health care professionals. This is particularly true among older (≥65 years) patients, but nearly 30% of children suffer from chronic pain as well. Unfortunately, only in the past 20 years has attention started to focus on this underrecognized pediatric population. Pain may stem from organic disease, such as cancer or from a process … Continue reading Novel Approach to Pediatric Pain Management
Stroke and Thrombosis Program Receives Educational Grant (10/31/2018) - Although stroke is often associated with the elderly, children are also affected and have the greatest risk for stroke during the first year of life. Stroke is one of the top 10 causes of death among children and up to 70% of pediatric stroke survivors have residual neurological impairment (1). Guidelines for the treatment of adult stroke are well established and hinge on both … Continue reading Stroke and Thrombosis Program Receives Educational Grant
New Gene Therapies for Neuromuscular Disease (10/26/2018) - Giving kids strength through precision medicine – new gene therapies for neuromuscular disease. Cook Children's Clinical Care Center designation from the Muscular Dystrophy Association reaffirms our commitment to excellence in clinical care for our patients with neuromuscular disorders, and represents the continuum of a more than 30-year relationship. This designation by MDA comes at a most exciting time in the treatment of children with … Continue reading New Gene Therapies for Neuromuscular Disease
Harnessing the Power of Magnetic Fields to Map the Brain (10/26/2018) - Magnetoencephalography, or MEG scan, works by recording brain magnetic fields generated from the electrical signals of neurons communicating with each other in the brain. Unlike electrical fields recorded via EEG, magnetic fields are not altered by intervening brain tissue, bone or fat. MEG offers superior capability to localize where in the brain activity is being generated. This leads to improved localization of seizure onset … Continue reading Harnessing the Power of Magnetic Fields to Map the Brain
Improving Seizure-Free Outcomes (10/26/2018) - Improving seizure-free outcomes ... without spending a dime. What would you say if someone told you seizure-free outcomes following epilepsy surgery could be improved by almost 100 percent simply by downloading some free software? That is exactly what the Cook Children's Comprehensive Epilepsy Program team did when they instituted the use of multimodal coregistered imaging protocols in 2009. Their results are published in Epileptic … Continue reading Improving Seizure-Free Outcomes
Innovation: Cutting-edge Imaging to Improve Pediatric Stroke Care (10/26/2018) - The incidence of pediatric stroke is steadily increasing, with most recent rates up to 13 per 100,000 children per year - similar to that of childhood brain tumors. Stroke is one of the leading causes of death in children, and 20 percent of children who have had a stroke will have a recurrence. The Cook Children's Comprehensive Stroke and Thrombosis Program, one of 16 … Continue reading Innovation: Cutting-edge Imaging to Improve Pediatric Stroke Care
The Gift of Gait: Selective Dorsal Rhizotomy (10/26/2018) - Selective dorsal rhizotomy improves ability to walk for children with cerebral palsy. Cerebral palsy is a motor disorder caused by a nonprogressive injury to the developing brain and commonly limits mobility. For children with cerebral palsy, the loss of mobility comes with multiple health and social issues, including social isolation due to the inability to keep up with peers, loss of independence and a … Continue reading The Gift of Gait: Selective Dorsal Rhizotomy
Getting to Those Hard to Reach Places: Laser Ablation for Intractable Insular Epilepsy (10/26/2018) - The insula is a region of the brain nestled beneath and between the temporal and frontal lobes. Increasingly, the insula has been implicated as a source of intractable seizures with seizure semiology including laryngeal constriction, paresthesias over large sensory territories, dysarthria and focal motor findings, amongst others. Because of its deep location, seizures originating in the insula can be misinterpreted to arise from the … Continue reading Getting to Those Hard to Reach Places: Laser Ablation for Intractable Insular Epilepsy
Celebrating 10 Years of Deep Brain Stimulation (10/26/2018) - In September 2017, we celebrated 10 years since the introduction of deep brain stimulation (DBS) as a treatment for patients at Cook Children's. DBS received a humanitarian device approval from the FDA in 2003 for treatment of dystonia in patients as young as 7 years of age and Director of the Movement Disorders program, Warren Marks, M.D., first proposed the idea of doing DBS … Continue reading Celebrating 10 Years of Deep Brain Stimulation
Improving Diagnosis of Early-life Epilepsy (10/26/2018) - Over the last decade, genetic testing has become more common as part of the evaluation for pediatric epilepsy. Often, we turn to genetic testing in hopes of better understanding the cause of epilepsies, which have defied diagnosis after a thorough exam, EEG, imaging and laboratory tests. Understanding the genetic basis can impact treatment. As increasing genetic etiologies have been identified, particular targeted treatments may … Continue reading Improving Diagnosis of Early-life Epilepsy
Dedicated Neuroscience ICU (10/24/2018) - The three primary diagnostic categories of patients discharged from Cook Children's Pediatric ICU (January 1, 2009 through December 31, 2010) were: respiratory (892 patients/24.18% of total discharges), cardiovascular (758/20.55%) and neurologic (617/16.73%). In 2011, Cook Children's set out to develop its own Neuro Critical Care Program with a vision to improve patient care and outcomes through quality improvement, research collaboration and a family-centered multidisciplinary … Continue reading Dedicated Neuroscience ICU
Technology: 3T Intraoperative MRI – Better imaging for better care (10/24/2018) - MRI images reveal the structure and functional processes of the body to an extent unparalleled by CT scan and other radiographic techniques without exposing patients to ionizing radiation. Hydrogen atoms in our tissues, when subjected to a high-frequency magnetic field, can be induced to generate radio-frequency signals detectable by antennas placed close to the skull. Varying the radio signal can "tune in" for different … Continue reading Technology: 3T Intraoperative MRI – Better imaging for better care
Collaborating to Improve Pediatric Epilepsy Surgery (10/24/2018) - Intractable epilepsy (failure to achieve seizure freedom after trials of two appropriate chosen and dosed antiepileptic drugs) has profound impact on quality of life, psychosocial function, cognitive function, and mortality risk1. For these patients, surgical therapy, consisting of localization and subsequent resection/ablation of the epileptogenic zone can result in favorable seizure reduction and for many, seizure freedom. Among patients with intractable epilepsy, an estimated … Continue reading Collaborating to Improve Pediatric Epilepsy Surgery
Improving Quality of Life in Medulloblastoma Survivors (10/8/2018) - With increasing survival rates for pediatric cancer patients, efforts to improve long-term quality of life have become a focus in research. Evidence-based research has demonstrated that social functioning contributes to health-related quality of life (HRQOL), and pediatric brain tumor survivors tend to have the poorest HRQOL among pediatric cancer survivors. However, specific contributing factors underlying the social difficulties experienced by brain tumor survivors have … Continue reading Improving Quality of Life in Medulloblastoma Survivors