
Tristan T. Sands, MD, PHD

Locations and Appointments
ColumbiaDoctors - West 86th Street
CUIMC/Harkness Pavilion
CUIMC/Neurological Institute of New York
Insurances Accepted
Please contact the doctor's office directly to verify that your particular insurance is accepted.
About Tristan T. Sands, MD, PHD
Tristan Sands, MD, PhD is an assistant professor of neurology at Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CUIMC) in the Division of Child Neurology.
Dr. Sands completed his child neurology residency at the University of California, San Francisco under the mentorship of Dr. Roberta Cilio and epilepsy and clinical neurophysiology fellowships at Columbia University Irving Medical Center under the tutelage of Dr. Cigdem Akman and Dr. James Riviello.
Dr. Sands is a pediatric and neonatal neurologist and epileptologist with clinical and research focus on seizures, epilepsies and developmental and epileptic encephalopathies resulting from genetic causes. His work has described how de novo KCNQ3 variants are responsible for a novel form of neurodevelopmental disability. His research into treatments for genetic epilepsies has demonstrated that benign neonatal seizures caused by mutation of the KCNQ2 and KCNQ3 genes show a universal response to carbamazepine and that early use of carbamazepine reduces the length of hospital admission for these newborns.
Dr. Sands will be evaluating epilepsy patients with putative genetic etiologies in a new Translational Medicine Clinic for the Genetic Epilepsies and conducting research on precision medicine for the genetic epilepsies with the IGM.
Boards and other certifications:
ABPN – Epilepsy, Clinical Neurophysiology & Neurology with Special Qualification in Child Neurology
Additional clinical expertise:
Genetic causes of epilepsy, including but not limited to, variants in KCNQ3, KCNQ2, NBEA, CSNK2B, GNB1, SCN1A, SCN2A, SCN8A, KCNT1, STXBP1, CHD2, SYNGAP1, CDKL5, PCDH19, KCNH1, DEPDC5, PIGA, PIGW, GNAO1, UBE3A, DYRK1A, PRRT2, ARX, DNM1, TSC1, TSC2, KANSL1, GRIN2A, ZEB2, MECP2, MEF2C, SMC1A, etc.
Board Certifications
- Neurology with Special Qualification in Child Neurology
Specialties & Expertise
- Aicardi syndrome
- Benign Neonatal Epilepsy
- Dravet syndrome
- Electrical Status Epilepticus during Sleep (ESES) and the Landau–Kleffner syndrome
- Epilepsy
- Epilepsy with Myoclonic-Atonic Seizures (Myoclonic-Astatic Epilepsy, Doose syndrome)
- Epileptic Encephalopathies
- Epileptic Seizures
- Genetic Epilepsies
- Lennox-Gastaut syndrome
- Neonatal and Infantile Epileptic Encephalopathies
- Neonatal Epilepsy
- Neonatal Neurology
- Neurogenetics
- Ohtahara syndrome and Early Myoclonic Encephalopathy
- Pediatric Epilepsy
- Pediatric Neurology
- West syndrome
Education
- Residency: University of California San Francisco Medical Center
- Fellowship: NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center
- Residency: University Of California At San Francisco
Leadership, Titles & Positions
- Assistant Professor of Neurology at CUMC
Hospital Affiliations
- NewYork-Presbyterian / Columbia University Irving Medical Center
- NewYork-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital