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You’re not just our patient. You’re our neighbor. For more than a century, Orlando Health Orlando Regional Medical Center has been honored to provide nationally recognized care for the Central Florida region we proudly call home. And because it’s your home, too, you deserve trusted healthcare within reach, so we can foster a partnership focused on health and wellness — together. Giving you more reasons to choose well. OrlandoHealth.com/ORMC choose well.

Epilepsy is one of the most common neurological disorders that causes unprovoked, recurrent seizures. A seizure is a sudden rush of abnormal electrical activity in the brain. Anyone can develop epilepsy, but it’s more common in young children and older adults. In adults aged 65 and older, the most common causes for new-onset epilepsy are ischemic stroke, neurodegenerative conditions such as dementia, tumors, and trauma. Nearly 25% of new-onset epilepsy occurs in the elderly.

With an average prevalence of 1%, sixty-five million people around the world have epilepsy. Three million four hundred thousand of those people are in the United States, and about 224,000 of them are in Florida. In addition, one in 26 people in the United States will develop epilepsy at some point in their lifetime. One-third of epilepsy patients live with uncontrolled seizures despite taking seizure medications. Six out of ten people with epilepsy have been unable to identify the cause of it. There are two main types of epilepsy: generalized epilepsy, which may affect the whole brain at the same time, and focal (or partial) seizures, which originate in one part of the brain and may spread to nearby areas, or even the entire brain.

Iam pleased to bring you another issue of Florida MD. Human trafficking is one of the horrors in today’s society. It’s modern day slavery and Central Florida is one of the worst places in the country. I have asked Paving the Way, an organization headquartered here in Central Florida that helps physicians spot signs that one of their patients could be a victim. Please check out their website and help put a stop to human trafficking..

Best regards,

Donald B. Rauhofer Publisher

According to Homeland Security, there are over 300,000 children a year trafficked in the United States. In fact, Florida ranks 3rd in the county for calls to the National Trafficking Hotline and right here in Central Florida, Orange county ranks 2nd in the state for child trafficking case. Sadly, the average age of entry is 11-14.

Those facts can be frightening, leaving most people asking, who am I to do anything about this? More importantly, what can I do?

Paving The Way Foundation was created to provide answers to those questions. We’ve educated over 13,000 youth, parents, teachers, and community leaders about human trafficking, the impact it has on families and the actions to take to prevent it.

A surprising statistic is 88% of trafficking victims reported being in a medical setting for various concerns but did not feel safe enough to ask for help. We can prevent that from happening by training our frontline teams to learn the signs of trafficking, understand grooming and recruitment tactics and how to engage with patients about this silent crime to get them to safety.

Here is one action you can take right now: put the National Trafficking Hotline number in your phone, 888-3737888, you can call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

To learn more about what you can do or ways to get involved in ending human trafficking we invite you to join in the fight, please go to our website, www.pavingthewayfoundation.org click on programs for information on what’s available to educate you and your staff or download one of our tool kits. Together we can disrupt the cycle of human trafficking.

For more information on advertising in Florida MD, call Publisher Donald Rauhofer at (407) 417-7400, fax (407) 977-7773 or info@floridamd www.floridamd.com

Email press releases and all other related information to: info@floridamd.com

Reprints of cover articles or feature stories in Florida MD are ideal for promoting your company, practice, services and medical products. Increase your brand exposure with high quality, 4-color reprints to use as brochure inserts, promotional flyers, direct mail pieces, and trade show handouts. Call Florida MD for printing estimates.

Publisher: Donald Rauhofer

Photographer: Donald Rauhofer / Florida MD

Contributing Writers: John “Lucky” Meisenheimer, MD, Daniel T. Layish, MD, FACP, FCCP, FAASM, Omer Abdul Hamid, MD, Paul J. Watkins, Michael Jablonski, MD, Christian Rosado, MD, John Meisenheimer, VII, MD

Art Director/Designer: Ana Espinosa

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