A 24-year-old woman with intractable seizures: review of surgery for epilepsy

Epilepsy, a recurrent seizure disorder affecting 1% of the population, can be genetic in origin and thereby affect multiple members in a family, or it can be sporadic. Many sporadic seizures come from a specific "focus" in the cortex. Focal-onset seizures account for 60% of all cases of epilepsy. Among patients with partial seizures, 35% respond poorly to available medication and may benefit from neurosurgical excisional surgery. In cases in which epilepsy is localized through different modes (electroencephalogram, magnetic resonance imaging, etc) to a specific area of the brain where there is an associated lesion, more than half of patients can expect a successful surgical outcome. In patients with consistent seizure-associated behavior but without a lesion, surgical treatment is less successful. Ms H, a young woman with a history of medically intractable partial epilepsy, does not have an anatomical lesion but wants to know if a surgical approach is a good option for her.