Surgery for intractable epilepsy

ABSTRACT

The pathologic findings in 60 consecutive patients with intractable epilepsy who consecutively underwent surgery at The Cleveland Clinic Foundation (1979-1984) were analyzed in an attempt to define pathologic findings influencing surgical outcome. Statistically significant predictors of outcome were sought from variables including macroscopic lesions, microscopic abnormalities, and the absence of significant pathologic findings. A higher percentage of patients (82%) with macroscopic temporal lobe lesions had an excellent result (seizure reduction >90%) than did the group with no significant pathologic findings (60%), but the differences were not statistically significant. The authors also found that the group of patients who had only temporal lobe resections had a higher percentage of excellent results (70%) than did the group of patients having epilepsy surgery for other areas of the brain (42.5%). This difference, however, was not statistically significant (P = .10).