Background and Objectives

   Epilepsy is a highly prevalent chronic disorder with an estimated number of patients reaching up to a million in Japan. However there are not enough specialist doctors who have sufficient knowledge and skill to treat epilepsy. The biggest reason of this shortage of specialists is the difficulty to learn to read electroencephalogram (EEG), which is indispensable for the diagnosis and management of epilepsy. There are a limited number of EEG trainers and only insufficient environment to educate novice electroencephalographers (EEGers). We have a long history of EEG examination in Department of Child Neurology at Okayama University, and contribute to train young people to be good EEGers in future.

Overview

   We yearly hold a digital EEG training session for novice EEGers who are mainly pediatricians but also include doctors in the other fields and medical personnels. The attendants have high motivation to learn EEG reading and they are from all over Japan. In every session, there are more than 50 attendants, and they can obtain wide knowledge ranging from the basics of EEG to the EEG background activity patterns and to representative epileptic discharges by manipulating EEG review machines by themselves under supervision of experts. These EEG training sessions are rare opportunities for novice EEGers and attracting more and more applicants.

Future plan

   We expect to increase doctors and medical personnels who are fully competent to read EEG, and to substantially expand the care for patients with epilepsy.