Get to know me and my work at Mayo Clinic

My name is Dr. Joe Sirven. I am a professor and chairman, actually, of the department of neurology here at Mayo Clinic in Arizona, and I specialize in epilepsy care.

I think that the best way to describe why I love my work in epilepsy is because I have so many different ways I can help the individual with epilepsy. When I was studying in med school, we had basically three medications for epilepsy, surgery was considered experimental, and there was nothing else out there. We now have 28 different medications for the management of epilepsy, some of which are very targeted to specific types. All those options let's you really try on a lot of different hats, if you will, when you're trying to present those options to a patient.

I think what you need to know about me in that situation is that we care. We want to help. We are there to partner. We are going to listen and we're going to try to figure out how we're going to put together an honest, realistic treatment approach that, number one, gets us to as best a cure that we can get to and, if not a cure, whatever gets us to the goal of decent, good quality of life.

That's what matters.