Advances in Epilepsy Surgery

Background: A large number of patients have epilepsy that is intractable and adversely affects a child's lifelong experience with addition societal burden that is disabling and expensive. The last two decades have seen a major explosion of new antiseizure medication options. Despite these advances, children with epilepsy continue to have intractable seizures. An option that has been long available but little used is epilepsy surgery to control intractable epilepsy.

Methods: This article is a review of the literature as well as published opinions.

Results: Epilepsy surgery in pediatrics is an underused modality to effectively treat children with epilepsy. Adverse effects of medication should be weighed against risks of surgery as well as risks of nonefficacy.

Conclusions: We discuss an approach to selecting the appropriate pediatric patient for consideration, a detailed evaluation including necessary evaluation, and the creation of an algorithm to approach patients with both generalized and focal epilepsy. We then discuss surgical options available including outcome data. New modalities are also addressed including high-frequency ultrasound and co-registration techniques including magnetic resonance imaging-guided laser therapy.