Surgical treatment of nonlesional temporal lobe epilepsy

One-third of the patients with drug-resistant temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) have a normal MRI, but there are only a few studies regarding the surgical outcomes and the efficacy of anterior temporal lobectomy (ATL) in patients with nonlesional TLE. The objective of this study is to evaluate the surgical outcomes and efficacy of ATL in patients with nonlesional TLE.

We included 77 consecutive patients without MRI-identifiable lesions who had undergone surgical resection for drug-resistant TLE. We performed univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses to identify the predictors of surgical outcomes, and the efficacy of ATL in patients with nonlesional TLE.

More than two-thirds of patients (51/76, 67.3 %) had achieved seizure freedom at the last follow-up. Presence of oroalimentary automatism, localized hypometabolism in FDG-PET, and concordant results in presurgical evaluations were associated with better surgical outcomes. Only 15 out of 77 patients (19.2 %) with nonlesional TLE were treated with ATL, and the surgically resected areas were located within the resection margin of ATL in one-third of the patients (26/77, 33.8 %). Patients with auras suggesting neocortical ictal onset and lateralizing semiological features had a higher chance that their potentially epileptogenic areas were located beyond or outside the resection margin of ATL.

Our study showed that the potentially epileptogenic areas were located beyond or outside the margin of the ATL in nearly two-thirds of the patients. Several clinical factors may be useful in predicting the location of an epileptogenic area, which can help optimize a surgical strategy in these patients.