Karkar, Kameel Michel

School of Medicine
Neurology
(210) 450-0500
karkar@uthscsa.edu

I am a neurologist with subspecialty expertise in epilepsy. Service has been my primary focus since my appointment in 2009 as clinical assistant professor. My clinical service has focused on caring for patients with medically intractable epilepsy, both in the clinic and at the hospital. I have an active outpatient practice devoted to patients with epilepsy that is incompletely controlled with medications. Administratively, I am the medical director of the UHS Epilepsy Clinic. In addition, I attend at the Epilepsy Monitoring Unit of University Hospital where I lead a dedicated group of epilepsy fellows, physician assistants, nurses, and EEG technologists in characterizing patients seizures and performing presurgical evaluations. One of my key functions as an epileptologist is to collaborate with neurosurgery colleagues on pre-surgical evaluations. In addition, I serve uninsured patients at the Epilepsy Foundation Clinic in San Antonio. Also in collaboration with the Epilepsy Foundation, I co-organized the 2013 Epilepsy Foundation/UT Medicine patient conference, an annual opportunity for patients to interface with epilepsy specialists from UT Medicine and the community; I have regularly given talks to patients and their caregivers at this annual conference since 2010. I have served city and state community physician groups by giving lectures on neurology/epilepsy topics and by providing informal consultations on patient management and EEG interpretation. At the national level, I am a member of the American Epilepsy Society (AES) and the American Clinical Neurophysiology society (ACNS). At AES, I have been a member of two Special Interest Groups (SIGs) since 2010. At the SIG meetings, members vote on topics of interest for presentation and discuss presentations of clinical and research topics. At AES, I am also a member of the Practice Management Committee; while at ACNS, I am a member of the International Relations Committee.

In the context of clinical service, I perform bedside teaching of fellows, residents, and medical students. Dedicated teaching activities include: Neuroscience Grand Round presentations to faculty, fellows, residents; didactic teaching lectures on clinical epilepsy/EEG topics to neurology residents and rotating students; as well as leading residents and fellows in epilepsy journal club discussions.

Although service is my main focus, I have engaged in research with the goal of contributing to the development of novel diagnostic tools for clinical epilepsy. I am currently investigating human focal epilepsy with non-invasive connectivity approaches using functional MRI. My interest in research has motivated me to serve in other research-related domains at our Health Science Center including pilot grant reviews for the IIMS, IRB membership, and coordinating our monthly departmental Epilepsy Research Conference. In terms of other committee work, I have served the university on the faculty senate for a two-year term.

In summary, I have had the privilege of serving patients with neurological disease, especially epilepsy, through my clinical work, administrative leadership, as well as my volunteer activities with the Epilepsy Foundation. I have also served the University in other capacities of grant review and committee work. At the national level, I have participated in Special Interest Group meetings at AES and I am a member of two national society committees. I have also been committed to teaching activities of my peers and trainees of our department.