Anesthesia for temporal lobe epilepsy surgery.

Anesthetic considerations for temporal lobectomy for refractory epilepsy include ensuring a safe and comfortable perioperative experience for the patient, providing suitable operating conditions for the surgeon, avoiding interference with intraoperative electrocorticographic (ECoG) recordings and facilitating intraoperative functional cortical mapping, if performed. Providing the conditions that simultaneously meet these requirements, using general anesthesia or local anesthesia with sedation, remains a significant challenge for the neuroanesthetist. We review issues pertinent to the choice of anesthetic technique for these procedures.