Surgery Reduces Epileptic Seizures

Although children with severe epilepsy are at high risk for significant mental handicaps, the results showed that those children who became seizure-free after surgery were able to develop better and may actually gain some abilities they did not have before the surgery.

"The questions answered in our study have a significant everyday value for counseling parents whether their child should undergo epilepsy surgery,” said corresponding author Ingrid Tuxhorn, M.D., who is conducting long-term quality-of-life studies on epilepsy at the Bethel Epilepsy Center (Bielefeld, Germany). Twelve months after the surgery, 82% of the children showed stable improvements in development, and three children showed gains of greater than 15 points in their intelligence quotient (IQ). Gains in IQ were only observed in seizure-free children.

"This study on the long-term cognitive outcome of preschool children who had epilepsy surgery shows that children with a shorter duration of epilepsy, more localized etiologies, and a seizure-free outcome have the best chance for improving their cognitive function two to three years after a successful operation,” observed Dr. Tuxhorn. "The question [now] is to provide data to determine ideal timing of surgical treatment.” Dr. Tuxhorn and co-author Hedwig Freitag, M.D., are editors of a book on pediatric epilepsy syndromes and their surgical treatment.