Epilepsy surgery is an effective therapeutic intervention that leads to a complete recovery. Epilepsy surgery is considered an effective therapeutic intervention that leads to complete recovery or reduction of the severity of the disease, and epilepsy surgery began more than a century ago, where surgical attempts were made to treat epilepsy in the middle of the last century. He performed many surgeries to treat epilepsy in Montreal, Canada, and the results of these operations were good, which encouraged many epilepsy treatment centers to offer the surgical option for epilepsy patients, and there are many scientific studies that have proven the effectiveness of surgery for treating epilepsy, and the most famous of these studies is what was published in the New Journal Medical England by the medical team in London, Canada, where the results of surgery were compared with the results of drug treatment in controlling epilepsy, and it was found that surgery is much more effective than drug treatment, and there are many medical studies that showed similar results.
Epilepsy surgery is performed after examining the patient and making numerous tests to locate the epileptic focus, these tests include EEG in the Epilepsy Monitoring Unit and making the necessary x-ray examination, after determining the origin of epilepsy in the brain, epilepsy surgery is carried out according to the patient''s condition, location and cause as well as the type of epilepsy, there are many data Which determines the effectiveness of surgical work to control epilepsy, as it includes the patient''s health status, the effectiveness of drugs, and the extent of determining the epileptic focus, the results are good if the epileptic focus is located in one place, so the surgical removal can be done without damage to the patient''s neurological functions.
Epileptic surgery includes many types of surgical procedures that can be summarized as follows:
1- Installation of internal EEG slides: in case the epilepsy is not located by external planning
Thin slices are placed on the surface of the brain to identify the epileptic focus. The patient is then monitored in the epilepsy treatment unit.
2- Removal of the epileptiform focus: This type of surgical intervention is considered the most effective, especially if the epileptiform focus is located in the temporal lobe in the event of atrophy and fibrosis in this region.
Hippocampal sclerosis
3- Separation of certain parts of the brain: This process is done to greatly reduce the severity of epilepsy, as the epileptic region is isolated from the rest of the parts of the brain or the two lobes of the brain are separated from each other, and there is a kind of subtle separation of the cerebral cortex in the event that the epileptic focus is located in a place that contains brain functions As sensitive as movement centers, this process is called cortical striping.
4- Electrical stimulation of the brain: There are many patients who suffer from general and unspecified epilepsy in a specific place, and in these cases electrical stimulation of the brain is used to reduce the severity of epilepsy, and there are two types of electrical stimulation available in centers in Saudi Arabia and in many international centers. The first type is vagus nerve stimulation in the neck, where wires are implanted around the nerve in the neck connected to a battery in the upper chest on the left side and it is called
Vagus Nerve Stimulation (VNS)
This device helps a part of patients in relieving epileptic seizures, and the effectiveness of the device increases over time and increases electrical stimulation while programming the device.
The second type is the installation of electrodes in specific nuclei inside the brain and connecting them to a battery that sends electrical charges to the brain to inhibit epilepsy, as recent medical studies have proven the effectiveness of this type of electrical stimulation.
5- Other types of therapeutic interventions: There are different types of interventions whose effectiveness has not been clearly demonstrated and they are under study to find out their effectiveness and potential harms. These interventions include focused radiation therapy for the epileptic site, implantation of epileptic cells within the epileptic focal, and the process of cooling the epileptic focus. By implanting a special device, this is a simple overview of the surgical procedures for the treatment of epilepsy, in which patients who benefit from this type of treatment are identified by a specialized medical team.
