Current role of EEG in the presurgical evaluation of temporal lobe epilepsy patients.

Despite all new developments in methodologies to investigate epileptic patients, EEG continues to play a central and irreplaceable role in clinical epileptology, especially in the presurgical evaluation of medically intractable epilepsies. Temporal lobe epilepsy is the most prevalent type of epileptic syndrome, and also the most frequent type of surgically treatable epilepsy. Non-invasive and invasive EEG methodologies are essential in the selection of surgical candidates. More recently there has been a trend towards the use of exclusively noninvasive methodologies. In this chapter we describe our current view on the role of diverse EEG methodologies in the presurgical evaluation of mesial temporal lobe epilepsies, addressing, in particular, the role of foramen ovale electrodes which, probably, needs to be reassessed in view of the unprecedented evolution of MRI.