Any experience with Dr. Jonathan Walker (Dallas)?

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Dignan

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He has a clinic that does Neurofeedback in Dallas, and I was wondering if anyone on the boards has any direct experience with him or his office.

I hear that you have to be careful when selecting a practitioner, and I want to find somebody that's worth a damn.

Thanks,

D:rock:
 
I've had contact with him via email, but no experience as a patient. He's been cited in a few news reports that have been mentioned in the forums. He seems to be a pioneer with a great success record in developing a QEEG guided protocol for neurofeedback for epilepsy. He seems to be well respected by the folks at the ISNR. IMO, he's probably one of a handful of true experts on using NFB for epilepsy.
 
One thing that gave me pause, was when I checked him out online, I found that he had been sanctioned, albeit for records issues.

Failure to keep adequate medical records (5/29/09)
Issued To:
Dr. Jonathan Edward Walker; License # D2622

Nature of Complaint:

The physician failed to properly document his clinical testing and evaluation to show justification for the physician's diagnostic conclusions and recommended treatment for two patients.

Action Taken:

The physician has entered into an Agreed Order with the Texas Medical Board subject to the following terms and conditions:

* The physician within one year shall successfully complete the medical recordkeeping course by the University of California San Diego PACE Program or board approved equivalent course.
* The physician shall pay an administrative penalty in the amount of $1000.00 within ninety days to the board.

February 9, 2010-Status Cleared

State:
Texas
Issued By:
State of Texas

Not sure how important that would be..
 
The above sanction and my general distrust of all Dr.'s now is making me skeptical as to whether I should even bother with this.

I'm exhausted from all the different Dr.'s who give different opinions and no one seems to know what they are doing.

Dr. Walker claims that they see a >= 50% reduction in seizures in over 90% of their patients. That sounds a little hard to believe to me..

What does anyone else think about that claim?
 
Why don't you just ask to see the statistics (and be aware of who has written them up) or look up his clinic online?

The most believable stats are those put out there by people not working for the clinic itself though.

personally I think that 50% less seizures is very believable. I would be curious about the stats of the other 10% as that's how they tend to manipulate such numbers.

Personally I would ask what is the % of reduction for ALL their patients.
 
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And how many seizure patients has he treated overall? That would be worth knowing.
 
Something else to keep in mind is how long he's been at it. Mr B mentioned that he's a pioneer when it comes to this, so obviously he's been doing it for a while. Well, does that mean he's been doing it 5 years? 10 years? Find out. The longer, the more experience and the more refined his skills are.
 
Ok, I have some documents based on Dr. Walkers QEEG guided Neurofeedback studies (so numbers are provided by his clinic). From 2005 to Present:

95% of patients became seizure free
All experienced >= 50% reduction in seizure frequency
The majority became drug-free with a normal raw EEG
Seizure types: partial complex (7), Partial complex with secondary generalization (50), primarily generalized (33).

That was from a paper presented by Walker in Clinical EEG and Neuroscience entitled "Power Spectral Frequency and Coherence Abnormalities in Patients with Intractable Epilepsy and Their Usefulness in Long-Term Remediation of Seizures using Neurofeedback."

It seems the cited study reflects on patients seen over the past 9 years. I haven't been able to find patient stats on seizure control not provided by the clinic itself.
 
I would still be curious to ask the questions people suggested.

I think by the docs reaction of how defensive or protective he gets of his info says a lot about how comfortable I might feel about them.
 
In all his published papers, he refers to downtraining low waves (1-10hz) and uptraining the smr type waves (15-18hz), but he mentioned that now he uses alpha (at 10hz) rather than smr because it appears to be more effective. Any thoughts?
 
Yes, I went to Dr. W recently and his office is very busy. While I was waiting, I have seen the office so packed that people were waiting int he hallway (I was told that this was common esp. during school breaks.) One lady I met brought her brother who had some learning disabilities (in his 40's) whose grand mals were not controlled with med. After NFs, she said that he has been seizure free for 2 months now. She also mentioned a lady she met at her last appt. who drove 3 hrs to bring their daughter to Dr. W's for speech problem. I am not certain of the particulars of this girl's condition but she said that she couldn't speak and that her mom even joked that she wished her daughter would say at least one swear word. Anyways, after NF at Dr. W's, her daughter can now say simple sentences like "I hope you have a nice day." The patients waiting were ages ranging from little elementary school kids to older adults.
 
I decided to go ahead and look into NF with Dr. Walker further.. So, I went in for an initial consultation with Dr. Walker, and I found some of his methods to be strange or at least new to me, so I wanted to see if anyone had heard of this type of thing..

He asked me routine questions about my history, which was fine. Then, he had me sit on an exam table and hold out my right arm, which I had to keep firm while he tried to push down on it. At the same time he touched different spots around my head and he claimed that he could tell areas that my be problematic for me based on how my arm responded as he was touching different points on my head... he said it was some sort of reflex testing. After doing this he said he detected something on the left side of my head.. which is all well and good, but I had already told him that my medical history showed activity in the left temporal region so I don't know if he was just trying to impress me or regurgitating what I had already told him, or if that technique is legit.

Then, he did the same thing but while holding little bottles of liquid that had vitamin and mineral names on them, again while pushing down on my arm and touching me on different points on my chest. He said this helped him determine if I had vitamin or mineral deficiency in any way.. (and as I had told him of my lingering back pain from the last seizure and osteopenia from Dilantin use) he said he was able to detect that I needed to take more calcium than I usually take for a few months to help my back heal.

This all seemed very strange, and I am quite skeptical, so has anyone else experienced anything like this and does it sound legit? He claimed it is an old technique that chiropractors use and others..

I went ahead and setup the appt for the QEEG brain mapping, but I'm not sure if this guy is for real or not.

Any help is appreciated..

D:rock:
 
I personally would go somewhere else.

There are some practices that believe that when pushing down on your arm while holding bottles of supplements your body can feel the energies of the supplement it needs. I believe in NF but I don't believe in that sort of energy healing or diagnosis so I personally would find another practitioner that is a bit more down to earth.
 
Dignan said:
... he said it was some sort of reflex testing. ... so I don't know if ...that technique is legit. ... He claimed it is an old technique that chiropractors use and others..
Click to expand...

That's called applied kinesiology and while you can find many quackwatch type commentaries warning people that it's bunk, there are some studies corroborating it's efficacy to some extent:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10069623

I would hope Dr. Walker is not relying on applied kinesiology to guide the neurofeedback protocols (that's what the QEEG mapping is for). It sounds like it was just part of a general initial screening.

Dignan said:
... I went ahead and setup the appt for the QEEG brain mapping, but I'm not sure if this guy is for real or not.
Click to expand...

I think he's for real. I'd ask him straight up if the applied kinesiology is going to continue to play a part in the NFB protocol or not. Discuss your concerns and see what he says.
 
I can answer some of your questions..

He went to Med School at Baylor College of Medicine and is a board certified Neurologist. He said that as he did more study and had more experience (he has 42 years of medical experience) that he became less enamored with the pharmaceutical route that traditional medicine seems tied to in terms of treating seizures and other issues like ADHD and autism. He then began doing more research into the NFB field and took his career in a different direction. I did tell him I was skeptical of all that kinesiology stuff, but I think it part of the initial screening. He mentioned several times that the QEEG tells him what areas to really focus on for the NFB and if there is anything else that needs to be addressed.

Previously, in this thread and others.. I had been given advice on questions to ask, so I include what I found out below.

In regard to the other 5% of patients? (since he claimed that 95% saw seizure reduction) He said that all saw seizure reduction, but that 5% were severe cases that were especially problematic and therefore their seizures could not be completely eliminated.

How many seizure patients has he dealt with? He said a few hundred.

How long has he been treating seizures with NFB? 20 years, but that in the last 6-8 years he has refined his technique to get to the point where he says he can eliminate the seizures completely.

I also asked him about the records Sanction from the State of Texas and he said that a client was evaluated and determined NOT to be a good candidate for NFB. They got angry and tried to report him to the state who came in and looked everything over upon which they said he hadn't documented things properly in a few cases. He said he has since made the correction to his patient record keeping and all is fine.

I am curious about the QEEG and the NFB, and the idea of getting rid of seizures (while honestly sounding too good to be true) makes me want to try it out. BUT, the kinesiology feedback thing he did as part of the initial screening did give me pause, and I told him this. He was cool about it, and said that all my questions were rational. He said he also knew my regular neurologist and had treated a few of his patients before. My regular neuro did know of Dr. Walker (although he didnt mention that any of his other patients had seen him), but as one might expect, he was skeptical of the whole NFB thing in general.

I don't really know of any other NFB practitioners in my area, so not sure what else I can do at this point.. The QEEG is scheduled for July.. if I go through with it.
 
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Thanks for the report Dignan. I really hope the NFB makes a difference for you. (I'm thinking of trying it in the fall). Keep us posted.
 
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