About Dr. Kohilavani Velayudam (Dr. Vela), MD

Dr. Kohilavani Velayudam (Dr. Vela) was born in India. She completed her medical school in India. Before coming to United States, she was working in a village as a primary care physician. That experience boosted her confidence that she could handle challenging situations with limited resources.

Dr Vela moved to the U.S. and completed her Pediatrics residency in 2005 at Advocate Lutheran general children’s hospital in Illinois. She completed her Pediatric neurology fellowship and Epilepsy fellowship at the Cleveland clinic, Ohio in 2008 and 2009. During her fellowships, Dr Vela developed a passion and interest in the care of complex epilepsy patients, medically intractable epilepsy, and neonatal seizures. She also found a niche in recruiting appropriate candidates for epilepsy surgery.

Dr. Velayudam is board certified in Pediatrics, Child neurology, Clinical Neurophysiology and Epilepsy. She worked as an Assistant Professor at Vanderbilt University, Tennessee for 4.5 years and then at Emory University and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta (CHOA) for the next 3 years.

At Emory and CHOA, she was managed patients in various pediatric epilepsy clinics including new onset seizure, intractable epilepsy, and epilepsy surgery clinics. In 2015, she started a specialty clinic for infantile spasm (IS) patients and developed a standard protocol for the management of IS.

She was and remains a strong and steadfast patient advocate both in her clinics and with neurosurgeons to correctly recruit appropriate patients for epilepsy surgery. Dr Vela was also an active participant in neurology education activities and served as Pediatric epilepsy fellowship director for 2 years.

Dr. Vela is comfortable treating any child with neurological issues but has a special interest in managing epilepsy patients. She is comfortable interpreting Electroencephalogram (EEG) for patients from newborn to adult. Her primary focus is to deliver excellent quality patient care, maintain good communication with families so they can understand all pertinent information, and work as a team to improve the quality of life for the special needs of children who have neurological problems.