White Matter Tracts in Patients with Temporal Lobe Epilepsy: Pre- and Postoperative Assessment

Patients with intractable temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) undergo surgical resection of the anterior temporal lobe. Preoperative assessment of TLE patients involves a multidisciplinary assessment and may involve the use of invasive electroencephalogram (EEG) recording for lateralization of seizure focus in ambiguous cases. Understanding the white matter fibre tracts affected in TLE may assist in preoperative lateralization and planning. We studied pre- and postoperative white matter fibre tract changes in six patients with TLE who underwent surgical resection. Our results indicate that changes in the corpus callosum are highly specific, with the ability to lateralize the epileptogenic side in 100% of our patients (six of six). Contralateral changes were found in all patients with variable involvement of white matter tracts. Postoperatively, most patients (five of six) exhibited further changes to the tracts on the ipsilateral side, with three patients showing contralateral abnormalities. We provide a detailed assessment of pre- and postoperative white matter fibre tracts in patients with TLE and confirm that abnormalities in the ipsilateral corpus callosum may aid in preoperative lateralization and obviate the need for invasive EEG monitoring.