Intractable Epilepsy destroys lives, and it is our mission to make these lives better both medically and financially, for the sufferers and their families.

 

Full Extract Medicinal Cannabis can work where Pharmaceutical treatment has failed, although legalised in 2018 it is not yet fully available on the NHS. Assisting with the cost of private prescriptions from Neurologists is one way we can assist the families of these sufferers.

 

Until such a time when Full Extract Medicinal Cannabis Oil for the treatment of drug resistant epilepsy is more widely available on the NHS, the Charity ‘INTRACTABLE’ will aim to raise funds to pay for Private Prescriptions for those who qualify.

 

Medicinal Cannabis Oil was legalised in the UK in November 2018. 

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What is intractable epilepsy?

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Intractable epilepsy (sometimes called refractory, uncontrolled, or drug-resistant epilepsy) is defined as failure of adequate trials of two tolerated, appropriately chosen and used antiepileptic drug schedules (whether as monotherapies or in combination) to achieve sustained seizure freedom. Epilepsy specialists agree that intractable epilepsy is epilepsy for which seizures are frequent and severe enough, or the required therapy for them troublesome enough, to seriously interfere with quality of life. An estimated 600,000 people in the UK suffer with epilepsy that’s 1% of the UK  population that have epilepsy but 30% of those sufferers are diagnosed with intractable epilepsy. 

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How can medicinal cannabis help treat intractable epilepsy 

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There are many medicinal cannabis preparations and like other epilepsy medications, they are all slightly different. Your specialist prescriber may try a few different cannabis medications to find the right one for the individual. 

 

Medicinal Cannabis has significantly helped some people with intractable epilepsy. A recent study by Drug Science showed a seizure reduction of over 80% in children who suffer from intractable forms of epilepsy. Although there is world evidence of its efficacy and safety and many theories on how medicinal cannabis works to reduce or stop seizures, until further research is done the exact mechanism of how medical cannabis helps epileptic seizures is unknown.