Surgical Treatment of Focal Epilepsy in Children; Results in 37 Patients

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

This report concerns 37 children and teenagers operated upon for intractable seizures between 1990 and 1994. Follow-up is at least 3 years. Fourteen children underwent pure temporal lobe resections; 71% are seizure free, and 93% have a better than 90% decrease in seizure frequency. The presence of a lesion on magnetic resonance imaging, the side of the lesion, or the presence of abnormal pathology had no influence on the result of resection. 28% of the children who had extratemporal resections are seizure free, and 83% have a greater than 90% decrease in seizure frequency. There was a trend to better results in those with a lesion on magnetic resonance imaging. In the small group with temporal plus extratemporal foci, the results were poor with only 60% showing a greater than 90% reduction in seizure frequency.