Chronic intractable epilepsy as the only symptom of primary brain tumor

We identified 39 patients with chronic epilepsy (seizures > or = 2 years) proven to have primary brain tumors. These cases represent approximately 12% of the surgery cases for epilepsy in the same period. Mean age of seizure onset was 13.2 years: mean duration before operation was 10.5 years. Thirty-eight of 39 had normal neurologic examination. Twenty-six tumors were temporal, 7 were frontal, 4 were parietal, and 2 were occipital. Nine of 26 (34.6%) of the temporal group had contralateral interictal EEG spikes. Pathology was 15 ganglioglioma, 13 low-grade astroctoma, 4 oligodendroglioma, 2 low-grade mixed glioma, 1 pleomorphic xanthoastrocytoma, 2 dysembryoplastic neuroepithelial tumor, and 1 ependymoma. Postoperative seizure frequency (minimum follow-up 6 months) ranged from 15 to 16 seizure-free auras only in patients with temporal tumors and total gross tumor removal (mean follow-up 28 months) to 0 of 6 seizure-free in patients with extratemporal tumors who underwent subtotal resection or biopsy.