Risk and benefit in the surgery of epilepsy: complications and positive results on seizures tendency and intellectual function.

A review of complications in a series of 560 consecutive craniotomies for surgery of epilepsy shows the mortality to be nil and the morbidity very low. Results on the seizure tendency for temporal resections are presented with emphasis on extent and modalities of removal. In this series the success/failure ratio was in the order of 80/20%. Patients with-right sided removal tend to do better than those with left-sided operations. Removal of the hippocampal formation appears to significantly improve the results. Patients studied with intracerebral electrodes tend as a group to do better than those operated without depth electrodes. Anterior temporal resection is usually followed by a significant increase in intellectual function when measured one year after surgery.