Want more iVillage? Sign up for our
Newsletters
Epilepsy - Surgery
SYMPTOMS & TREATMENTS
- Topic Overview
-
Health Tools
- Cause
- Symptoms
- What Happens
- What Increases Your Risk
- When To Call a Doctor
- Exams and Tests
- Treatment Overview
- Prevention
- Home Treatment
- Medications
- Surgery
- Other Treatment
- Other Places To Get Help
- Related Information
- References
- Credits
Even though medicine is the most common approach to treating epilepsy, it does not always work. In almost one-third of people with epilepsy, medicine cannot control their seizures adequately (or at all, in some cases). This number is even higher in people with focal epilepsy. Surgery can greatly improve the lives of some people who have epilepsy.
You may be a good candidate for surgery if your seizures:
- Occur often enough to severely disrupt your life.
- Tend to result in injury or harm (for instance, if seizures cause frequent falls).
- Change or alter your consciousness.
- Are not controlled well with medicine, or you cannot tolerate the side effects of the medicines.
Having frequent or severe seizures often restricts you from driving, doing certain kinds of work, and other activities. Medicine may fail to control these seizures, or it may cause side effects severe enough to disrupt your lifestyle.
Surgery is not an "if all else fails" approach to treating epilepsy. It often may be a better choice than trying each and every medicine. For adults with temporal lobe epilepsy, for instance, surgery may be considered if two different first-line medicines are tried and neither controls the seizures adequately. For certain types of childhood epilepsy—disorders that children cannot outgrow and that do not respond to medicine—having surgery at the youngest possible age may offer the greatest benefit for the child. The younger brain is more adaptable and recovers better after surgery.
Epilepsy surgery removes an area of abnormal tissue in the brain, such as a tumor or scar tissue, or the specific area of brain tissue where seizures begin. Before surgery, you may have several tests (including an electroencephalogram [EEG], magnetic resonance imaging [MRI], and video monitoring) to find exactly where seizures begin in the brain. After the area of abnormal tissue where your seizures begin has been located, doctors can decide whether or not it can be removed safely.
Surgery is usually done in a hospital that is associated with an epilepsy center. The surgery usually takes a few hours, and you have to stay in the hospital for a few days afterward. It may be several months or more before you feel fully back to normal.
Surgery Choices
The type of epilepsy surgery depends on the location in the brain in which seizures start.
The most common surgery is anterior temporal lobectomy, which is the removal of part of one of the brain's temporal lobes. For many people with temporal lobe epilepsy, this surgery offers a very good chance of becoming seizure-free.
Some types of surgery are usually only done on children.
- Corpus callosotomy helps some children who have Lennox-Gastaut syndrome by reducing falls that happen during seizures. These can happen often and often cause injury to the child.
- Hemispherectomy during the first few years of life may benefit children with other uncommon, severe forms of epilepsy (such as Rasmussen syndrome or Sturge-Weber disease).
What To Think About
Surgery can be very effective for some people with epilepsy, but it is not an option for everyone. If you or your child has a type of epilepsy that might improve with surgical treatment, you may want to think about some of these issues:
- Surgery is not a last resort. It may be considered after unsuccessfully trying two medicines.
- Early surgery for some forms of childhood epilepsy may end seizures and prevent or reverse developmental delays. Children make good surgical candidates. They tend to recover quickly with fewer problems afterward.
- People who have temporal lobe epilepsy and whose seizures do not get better with medicines may be good candidates for surgery.
- Surgery is not always a cure for epilepsy. Some people never have seizures again after surgery. But for many others, surgery only reduces seizure frequency or severity.
- You need to be healthy to have the surgery and to benefit from it. People with severe illnesses, psychiatric disorders, or neurological problems other than epilepsy may need evaluations from more specialists to see if they are good candidates for epilepsy surgery.
- Epilepsy surgery involves removing part of your brain. It can affect your brain function, although the effects may be less bothersome than those caused by the epilepsy itself. Problems after surgery can be mild to severe—such as less energy, visual defects, language and memory problems, and weakness or partial paralysis on one side of the body—and may be temporary or permanent.
- Brain surgery is an expensive way to treat epilepsy and carries with it many risks. Even if medicine does not prevent your seizures, surgery may not be recommended if you only have seizures once in a while or do not have severe seizures.
| By: | Healthwise Staff | Last Revised: October 15, 2009 |
| Medical Review: | Kathleen Romito, MD - Family Medicine Steven C. Schachter, MD - Neurology | |
© 1995-2011 Healthwise, Incorporated. Healthwise, Healthwise for every health decision, and the Healthwise logo are trademarks of Healthwise, Incorporated. This information does not replace the advice of a doctor. Healthwise, Incorporated disclaims any warranty or liability for your use of this information. Your use of this information means that you agree to the Terms of Use. How this information was developed to help you make better health decisions.
Welcome to Care Circle, an exclusive tool to help you take care of yourself and your loved ones. Here's how it works:
- Create profiles for yourself and your loved ones.
- Select the topics and conditions that interest each of you.
- Get customized news updates, original content, tools, and expert advice for each Care Circle member delivered directly to your personalized homepage.
The information you input is strictly private; you choose who has access to your Care Circle.
How do I add myself or someone else to my care circle?
Click on "Add someone." Fill out the short profile. Choose an avatar. Select the topics and conditions that interest this person from the pulldown menu. You can select as many as you want, but you must choose at least one. Click on "Add Someone" again. You should start getting updates immediately.
How do I save content to my Care Circle?
Click on "Manage My Care Circle." Select the tab of the person for whom you're saving content. Put your cursor over the piece of content that you want to save; a disk icon will appear in the righthand corner. Click on the disk and the piece of content will be moved to a save folder.
How do I add additional topics and conditions for someone in my Care Circle?
Click on "Manage My Care Circle." Select the tab for the person whose preferences you'd like to update. Under "Add More to Follow," select additional topics and conditions.
How do I delete topics and conditions for someone in my Care Circle?
Click on "Manage My Care Circle." Select the tab for the person whose preferences you'd like to update. Under "Follows," scroll over the topic or condition you want to delete. An "X" should appear on the righthand side. Click on the "X" and the topic or condition will be deleted from the list.
To manage your Care Circle, Please
Sign In.
from
- Facebook is now fueling organ donations
- Military women and suicide: Home safe but not sound
- Still in gear: Injuries don’t stop veterans on 100-day bike trek
- Ask Jenna: I've hit a weight loss plateau. What do I do?
- He poses in a tutu to laugh in face of wife's cancer
- After chemo hair loss, 'henna crowns' help heal
The iVillage Network