The relationship between the seizure outcome and timing of surgery
Seizures are sudden, irregular electrical activity in brain. A person who experienced multiple seizure episodes chronically is usually diagnosed with epilepsy.
According to the statistics, around 3.4 million Americans suffer from epilepsy severely impacting their home, school, and work life.
Refractory seizures, also known as drug resistant seizures, usually happens in epilepsy patients who have been tried 2 different anti-seizure medications but unable to bring the seizures under controlled.
Prescribing more medications or doing medication adjustments in these cases does not seem to effectively control the seizures and is also likely to increase the risk of side effects. Surgery may be the only effective way to deal with drug resistant epilepsy.
“Drug resistant epilepsy affects every aspect of life, and no other treatment is as effective as epilepsy surgery. Before the surgical option is chosen, an advanced investigation is needed, to show that the person’s attacks come from this limited region in the brain,” says Kristina Malmgren, senior professor at Sahlgrenska Academy and consultant physician at Sahlgrenska University Hospital.
Another important question is related to the best time to receive epilepsy surgery.
A new meta-analysis published in Neurology evaluated 25 studies investigated whether the seizure outcome could be impacted by the onset of time for the epilepsy surgery. Researchers compared subjects’ who did the epilepsy surgery in different timeline (before vs after 2, 5, 10, and 20 years of epilepsy duration) and comparing their seizure outcomes.
The result of the reviewed study showed that people who received epilepsy surgery earlier were more likely to be seizure free after the epilepsy surgery. People who might benefit from epilepsy surgery should not delay to be evaluated by physicians for presurgical assessment. Authors mention that the study has many con-founders.
For more information please visit Neurology.
Questions: How frequently do you counsel patients with seizures? What are your thoughts on the research conclusions?
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