The board-certified and fellowship-trained neurologists with Norton Children’s Neuroscience Institute, affiliated with the UofL School of Medicine, are the leading providers of neuromuscular disorder care in children from Louisville, Kentucky, and Southern Indiana.

Norton Children’s Hospital is the pediatric teaching hospital for the University of Louisville School of Medicine. Our physicians are training the next generation of pediatric specialists.

We will determine the severity of your child’s neuromuscular disorder and create a treatment plan that minimizes risk, so your child can get back to being a kid again.

What Are Neuromuscular Disorders?

Neuromuscular disorders affect how the brain and spinal cord send signals to the muscles or affect how the muscles work.

If your child has a suspected neuromuscular disease, our multidisciplinary team will work together to create a diagnosis and treatment plan. Our partnership with the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) allows us to have providers in a single multidisciplinary clinic from multiple specialties, including neurology, pulmonary medicine, orthopedics, physical therapy, occupational therapy and speech therapy.

Conditions we treat include:

• Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease (CMT)
• Muscular dystrophy
• Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD)
• Spinal muscle atrophy (SMA)

Why Norton Children’s Neuroscience Institute?

• The Norton Children’s Hospital Comprehensive Epilepsy Center is a Level 4 epilepsy center, the highest rating available from the National Association of Epilepsy Centers. Norton Children’s Hospital has held this designation since 2013.
• We are the first in Kentucky and among the first in the nation to use neurostimulation in a pediatric patient.
• Regional neurology care is available for children across Kentucky and Southern Indiana. We travel to clinics in Bowling Green, Campbellsville, Elizabethtown, Frankfort, Owensboro and Paducah, Kentucky; and Evansville, Indiana. We also perform a number of telemedicine visits each week.
• The specialists with Norton Children’s Neuroscience Institute, affiliated with the UofL School of Medicine, use state-of-the-art technology to treat epilepsy, uncontrollable seizures and deep brain tumors in children who, in the past, would not be candidates for surgery, including:
  • Visualase: Technology that allows neurosurgeons to perform MRI-guided laser ablation surgery. Fewer than two dozen pediatric hospitals in the U.S. offer this technology.
  • Surgical Theater: Virtual reality technology that creates an immersive 3D view of a patient’s brain, allowing neurosurgeons, the patient and family to see inside the skull and brain to get a greater understanding of the condition and impact of potential procedures. Norton Children’s Hospital is the first hospital in the region to use this technology.
• We offer dedicated multidisciplinary clinics for brain tumors, traumatic brain injuries, spina bifida, craniofacial injuries and disorders, epilepsy, muscular dystrophy, spasticity, headache/migraine, autism and neurocutaneous disorders.
• Our multidisciplinary craniofacial program was the first established in the Midwest.
• We offer a neurogenetics clinic to evaluate and treat children with neurogenetic syndromes.
• We have a neuropsychology program that specializes in the evaluation of children and teens with a variety of neurological, neurodevelopmental and medical conditions, including brain tumors and epilepsy.
• Outpatient neurology facilities in downtown Louisville are equipped with in-office electroencephalography (EEG) capabilities and laboratory services in the same building, creating a streamlined, family-centered environment.
• We offer the region’s first clinic to treat children with immune-mediated neurological disorders.

Brittany Hornickel, nurse coordinator
Leah Todd, social worker