Surgical Treatment of Pediatric Epilepsy

Children with medically refractory epilepsy may benefit from neurosurgical interventions. As in adults, temporal lobectomy in patients with temporal lobe seizure focus gives good rates of long-term seizure freedom. Neocortical foci are more common in children and often require invasive monitoring with different resective surgeries to treat. Hemi-spherectomy in patients with unilateral epilepsy and hemispheric deficits has a good outcome as well. Corpus callosotomy and vagus nerve stimulation are effective tools to reduce seizure severity and frequency in children who are not candidates for resective surgery.