Abstracts

Rationale: In Japan, VNS (vagus nerve stimulation) therapy was first introduced in July 2010, and almost 700 cases of VNS therapy have already been performed to date. Yet, this number of VNS therapy introduction is not as anticipated initially. We now focused on the child neurologist of our medical area, who might have long been taking care of possible epilepsy surgical candidates including transitional cases. Methods: We performed a questionnaire study to the child neurologist of our area in April 2013, to investigate the background regarding VNS therapy introduction. We also analyzed the motivation of VNS therapy introduction in our 13 VNS cases. Results: Out of 56 Japan board-certified child neurologist, 8 neurologists placed back answer sheet. Those 8 doctors have previous experience of referring their own patients to the epilepsy surgery, although their understanding to the surgical indication varied. All the 8 child neurologist considered cranial epilepsy surgery should be performed when indicated, even if the reason for the referral to the epilepsy surgical center is VNS. In our cases, some of the VNS cases were not referred to us with the intention of VNS or epilepsy surgery. Conclusions: We consider that the enlightenment of the VNS therapy, both to the patients and to the clinicians, would promote the epilepsy surgery, thus to be a useful tool of its promotion.