MISSION VIEJO (October 11, 2021) – Epilepsy is the third most common neurological disorder, and yet, until recently, some South Orange County residents have had to travel outside the region for certain types of care. With the opening of the Epilepsy Monitoring Unit, Providence Mission Hospital is able to treat more patients close to home. This month the Epilepsy Monitoring Unit will be expanded to provide even more essential care for South County.
The unit is designed to provide more sophisticated testing for patients who require a higher level of care, says Parshaw J. Dorriz, MD, chief of the neurology department and site director for the Epilepsy Monitoring Unit. “Before this unit, we didn’t have full epilepsy coverage in South Orange County,” he says.
The unit provides state-of-the-art inpatient testing for adults with confirmed epilepsy who have not improved with medications and are being evaluated for surgery, as well as testing to better characterize the type of seizure or the cause of epileptic episodes.
The Mission Epilepsy Center is a critically important member of the USC Epilepsy Care Consortium, a collaborative partnership for 10 epilepsy centers that share resources and expertise to provide epilepsy services over a large geography from Madera to South Orange County. "The expansion of the EMU at Mission under Dr. Dorriz' leadership is a very important development as we all pull together to address the public health dimensions of epilepsy in Orange County and across our region," says Charles Liu, MD, PhD, Professor of Neurological Surgery and Neurology at USC Keck School of Medicine and leader of the consortium.
“The consortium is an integral part of our program,” Dr. Dorriz says. “We have a weekly summit where we discuss our cases, show our results and receive the counsel and consensus of over 20 physicians, including epileptologists, neurosurgeons and neuroradiologists. Patients get their care locally, confident they are getting world-class, academic-level care.”
About Providence Mission Hospital
Providence Mission Hospital is a state-of-the art, 523-bed acute care regional medical center in Mission Viejo, California. As one of the busiest designated adult and pediatric Level II Trauma Centers in the state of California, Providence Mission provides a full range of reputable specialty health care services with highly skilled teams treating a multitude of complex conditions. Services include a full range of expertise in cardiovascular, neuroscience and spine, orthopedics, cancer care, women’s services, mental health and wellness, head and neck, and a variety of other specialty services.
Providence Mission Hospital in Laguna Beach provides South Orange County coastal communities with 24-hour emergency and intensive care as well as medical-surgical/telemetry services, orthopedics, general and GI surgery. CHOC at Providence Mission Hospital is a 54-bed facility that is the area’s only dedicated pediatric hospital.
Fully accredited by The Joint Commission and designated as a Magnet hospital by the American Nurses Credentialing Center for nursing excellence, Providence Mission Hospital is highly recognized for its high quality of care, evidenced through a multitude of healthcare quality benchmarks.
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