Our neurology department provides rehabilitation and care to children with neurological conditions, as well as general medical patients up to the age of 18 years old. Neurology comes from the Greek word ‘nerve’ and includes any conditions affecting the nervous system, including craniofacial, strokes, epilepsy, tumours, and head and spinal injuries.
Approximately 800 new patients are treated for neurological conditions at the hospital every year. We also host around 70 outreach clinics at 14 centres across the region.
Our services
We provide specialist assessment and treatment of acute and rapidly evolving neurological disorders in children including epilepsy, movement disorders, acquired brain injury, stroke, rare neuro-genetic disorders, neuromuscular disorders, headaches, neuro-inflammatory disorders, demyelinating disorders, acute neurological disorders and excessive daytime sleepiness.
Some of the services we offer are:
- Complex epilepsy services including epilepsy surgery, video EEG telemetry, ketogenic diet and vagal nerve stimulator
- Spasticity and movement disorders services including botulinum toxin injection treatment for tone disorders, functional neurosurgical interventions (intrathecal baclofen, deep brain stimulation, selective dorsal rhizotomy)
- Neuro-rehabilitation service
- Neuromuscular service
- Neuro-inflammatory disorders clinic
- Acute neurology including stroke
- Outreach service to local paediatric centres across Cheshire and Merseyside and wider north west England and Wales
Neurophysiology – our Roald Dahl EEG service
Neurophysiology focuses on how the brain and nervous system work and is a crucial diagnostic link in the evaluation of children with epilepsy and neuromuscular disorders.
Our neurophysiology team carries out tests which look at how the brain and nervous system work. These include a range of electroencephalogram (EEG) tests; this is when small sensors are attached to the scalp to pick up the electrical signals produced when brain cells send messages to each other. These signals can then be analysed to see if they are unusual.
At Alder Hey we conduct standard EEG tests as well as sleep-deprived EEG, ambulatory EEG (at home) and video-telemetry EEG as well as an Electromyography (EMG) service and overnight sleep studies for both neurology and respiratory patients.
Our neurophysiology service is also part of the Epilepsy Service for more go to the Epilepsy surgery.