Surgery

Surgical therapy is generally reserved for those with drug-resistant epilepsy, in whom seizure prevention would lead to a significant improvement in quality of life. Surgery may consist of resection of a brain lesion or cortical area that is responsible for the person’s seizures, provided the risk of significant neurological deficit is low.

People with frequent ‘drop attacks’ due to tonic or atonic seizures can experience repeated facial, head and other injuries; corpus callosotomy may eliminate ‘drop attacks’, resulting in a worthwhile improvement in quality of life, despite persistence of other seizure types.