The DEE-SWAS Special Interest Group (SIG) is a multicenter, collaborative effort to identify the best treatments and outcome measures to improve the care of children with DEE-SWAS. Given the significant variability in terminology, diagnosis, management, and outcomes in children with DEE-SWAS, our group aims to reduce the variability in this diagnosis and optimize the outcomes of children with DEE-SWAS.

Our group meets on the first Wednesday of every month at 3 pm EST

Sig Co-leader

Don Phillips, M.D.

Children’s Hospital of Orange County

Dr. Donald Phillips is a board-certified pediatric epileptologist and neurophysiologist at CHOC in Orange County, California. As an expert in pediatric epilepsy, Dr. Phillips cares for babies, kids, teens and young adults with a wide variety of epilepsy-related health conditions such as infantile spasms, Lennox Gastaut Syndrome (LGS), Dravet Syndrome and CDKL5 Deficiency Disorder. He specializes in medically complex epilepsy syndromes, surgical epilepsy, epileptic encephalopathy, tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC) and pediatric intraoperative neuromonitoring.
Dr. Phillips is the interim medical director of the CHOC Comprehensive Epilepsy Center, medical director of the neurodiagnostic/EEG laboratory and medical director of the CHOC Tuberous Sclerosis Complex (TSC) Clinic. In these roles, Dr. Phillips has worked to facilitate high quality, accessible and comprehensive care for all patients and families living with epilepsy and TSC.
His research interests include electrographic status epilepticus in sleep (ESES), epileptic encephalopathy, computational EEG and epilepsy quality improvement (QI). Dr. Phillips is the site principal investigator for several clinical trials evaluating emerging pharmaceutical and medical device therapies for a variety of rare epilepsy syndromes.
Dr. Phillips earned his bachelor’s degree in chemistry and biochemistry from University of Michigan and his master’s degree in public health from Boston University before obtaining his medical degree from University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine. He completed his internship, residency and a fellowship in pediatric epilepsy at University of California Los Angeles. He is a fellow of the American Clinical Neurophysiology Society and a member of American Epilepsy Society and the Orange County Medical Association.

SIG Co-Leader

Lekha Matsumori Rao, M.D.
UCLA

Dr. Lekha M. Rao is triple board certified in Neurology/Child Neurology, Clinical Neurophysiology, and Epilepsy. After obtaining her BA in Neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University and MD at Drexel University, she completed pediatric residency, child neurology fellowship, and pediatric epilepsy fellowship at UCLA. She was the recipient of a 2011- 2013 Epilepsy Foundation of Greater Los Angeles Care and Cure Fellowship. Dr. Rao also sees pediatric epilepsy and neurology patients at Olive View-UCLA Medical Center, a safety net hospital in the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services.

Dr. Rao’s research interests include acute symptomatic neonatal seizures, autism and epilepsy, and developmental epileptic encephalopathy with spike-wave activation in sleep. She is also the principal investigator in several clinical trials for early life epilepsy and neonatal seizures. She is a member of the Child Neurology Society, the American Academy of Neurology, and the Newborn Brain Society, as well as a Fellow of the American Epilepsy Society. She is also the director of the Pediatric Epilepsy Fellowship track and the associate program director for the Child Neurology Residency at UCLA.