[Island of Reil and pharmacoresistance in epilepsy]

Over the last few years surgery has been developing, with promising results, methods to treat an important number of cases of partial epilepsy that are related, to different extents, with the lobe of the insula and display pharmacoresistance. Better knowledge of the anatomofunctional particularities of this region of the cortex, new neuroimaging and neurophysiological techniques, together with the use of the surgical microscope, stereotactic support and neuronavigation, have had a strong influence on the development of this type of surgery.

In this paper we report three cases of patients with epilepsy and who were diagnosed as suffering from structural lesions of the insular region: two cavernomas and an oligodendroglioma. The preoperative study was carried out using magnetic resonance imaging, angiography and video EEG. The surgical procedure consisted in a transsylvian approach with electrocorticography, which provided us with the clinical results we have studied.

The correct approach to the diagnosis of the epileptogenic insular lesions must include a complete neurophysiological study and preoperative planning with angiography. This allows their surgical resection through the transsylvian approach and enables us to obtain, with a very low degree of morbidity, clearly satisfactory results as regards the decrease in the number of seizures in these patients