Surgery for Intractable Epilepsy
Surgery can be an option for children with intractable epilepsy, even if imaging tests do not reveal a brain abnormality that is causing the seizures. About half of children with intractable epilepsy may be candidates for surgery.
The goal of epilepsy surgery is to dramatically lower how severe and how often seizures happen. When possible, the goal is to eliminate them.
Surgery for Children Whose Seizures Arise from a Single Location in the Brain
If a child’s seizures come from a single location in the brain, the care team may recommend resection or laser ablation surgery. Neurosurgeons perform these surgeries.
- Epilepsy Resection Surgery. Removes the brain tissue causing seizures.
- Laser Ablation Surgery for Epilepsy. Uses a medical device (such as a laser) to destroy the brain tissue that is causing the seizures.
At Cincinnati Children’s, more than 50 percent of patients who have resection or ablation surgery are free from seizures. Typically, patients who do not achieve complete seizure freedom with surgery have significantly fewer seizures, sometimes 90 percent fewer.
Other Surgeries for Children with Intractable Epilepsy
Resection and ablation surgeries may be too risky if the seizure focus is near brain regions that control:
- Movement
- Speech
- Memory
- Other critical functions
Also, these surgeries are not used to treat seizures that may be coming from multiple locations in the brain.
The care team may recommend implanting a device that will help control, target or prevent the seizures. These types of surgeries include:
- Vagus nerve stimulation (VNS)—A device (stimulator) is implanted. It sends mild pulses of electrical energy to the brain through the vagus nerve. The pulses can shorten or prevent seizures.
- Responsive neuro stimulation (RNS)—A neurostimulator device is implanted in the skull. It gives small electrical pulses when it recognizes that a seizure is about to start. The pulses control brain activity to prevent seizure symptoms.
- Deep brain stimulation (DBS)—In select cases, RNS electrodes are placed deep into the brain in an egg-like structure called the thalamus. The electrodes deliver signals to the brain to reduce seizure frequency. This therapy is like traditional DBS that is used by doctors to treat movement disorders.
The care team may recommend other types of surgery for children whose seizures come from one or more brain regions. These surgeries include:
- Lobectomy—The brain has four different lobes (sections), including the temporal, frontal, occipital and parietal. A lobectomy involves surgically removing the lobe where the seizures are starting.
- Cortical resection surgery—This involves removing the part of the brain that is causing seizures. It does not remove the entire lobe.
- Corpus callosotomy—This involves cutting a band of nerve fibers that connects the brain’s two halves (hemispheres). This interrupts the spread of seizures from one side of the brain to the other.
- Hemispherectomy—This involves removing the connection between the right and left sides of the brain. This prevents seizures from spreading from the diseased part of the brain to the part that is not causing seizures.
- Hemispherotomy—This involves removing the right or left side of the brain.
Children whose seizures come from multiple brain regions may also be candidates for VNS or RNS devices.