Neurology

After spending much of his early life in hospitals, Jackson Verner lived out his dream as UCLA Kid Captain, charming everyone along the way.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the use of a procedure that is highly beneficial for people with movement disorders such as Parkinson’s disease to treat some patients with severe epilepsy. The procedure, deep brain stimulation (DBS), involves implantation of a “brain pacemaker” to send electrical impulses to targeted areas of the brain [...]

“We’re parents who came together to support each other and to look at how the next generation can benefit from the hospital,” says Monique Rosenthal, a member of the Parent Association Council at UCLA Health. “My daughter is a patient under the care of By uclahealth • May 13, 2019

March is Women’s History Month, which “honors and celebrates the struggles and achievements of American women throughout the history of the United States.” We take this opportunity to recognize the many contributions women have made to the fabric of our nation, including in the fields of medicine [...]

“Dr. Jason Lerner was one of the few doctors who believed me when I said Kourtney was having absence seizures,” says Kathy Daigle, mother to 14-year-old Kourtney Daigle. Also pictured is Kourtney’s father, Ken Daigle. Kathy continues, “He’s been treating Kourtney since she was [...]

“At first I didn’t think anything of it. I thought I was just getting the chills and blanking out for a second. It wasn’t until my mom noticed that we put two and two together,” says 18-year-old Briza Garcia, who was diagnosed with juvenile myoclonic epilepsy at 17. “It was [...]

“We work together as a family unit to make Steele’s life happy and as normal as possible,” says Bernadette Schaaf, mother to 14-year-old Steele Schaaf, who has Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome, a condition characterized by recurrent seizures. Pictured left to right: John Schaaf, Steele, Bernadette, Vaughn, Vance, and Flatr. “We had just [...]

“I started having seizures when I was 6,” says 16-year-old Alfred Guilfoil, who has nocturnal tonic-clonic frontal lobe seizures. “My seizures only occur at night. Dr. Jason Lerner helped me get my seizures under control, and he’s good at finding medication that [...]

Dear Doctors: I’ve always had headaches, from the time I was a teenager. But now I get them more often – about one headache per week. Is this a warning sign of something? Headache is among the [...]

Dear Doctor: I’m a 78-year-old woman who developed shingles in December 2014. The rash settled in the nerves on my left side, from under the breast, to the waist and around the middle of my back. Is there anything to ease the pain? Would the shot help?