Surgical treatment of complex partial seizures: 20 years' experience

From 1972 to 1992 inclusive, the author performed 263 surgical procedures for the relief of intractable epilepsy. The purpose of this report is to review 112 temporal lobectomies for the treatment of drug-resistant complex partial seizures. There were 90 adults and 22 children, in whom there were 61 left-sided procedures and 51 right-sided ones. All these cases represent 10% of 2,676 epileptics seen at the Osler Clinic during the last 20 years. The results were evaluated in four groups: 60 patients belonging to group A were seizure-free, group B comprised 24 patients with a reduction in seizures of 75%, group C which included 17 cases had minimal improvement, and finally group D with 11 patients showed no improvement at all. The factors of good surgical outcome were analyzed in 60 patients. The total number of patients that substantially improved after surgery represented 74.5% of the whole series with no mortality and a morbidity of 1.8%.