Presurgical evaluation and surgical treatment of medically refractory epilepsy

Thanks to today's modern imaging examination techniques and especially to the common use of intracranial electrodes for localizing seizure foci, more and more patients with partial epilepsy can be treated microsurgically. The results of such neurosurgical therapies are very good, particularly in mesial temporal lobe epilepsy. In recent years, good results (60-70% seizure freedom) have also been achieved in extratemporal epilepsy surgery, so that such procedures can now be recommended for carefully selected patients. In this review, presurgical evaluations and the different surgical approaches are presented.