“Can surgery completely cure epilepsy?”
My friend's daughter has epilepsy and they have decided to undergo surgery to treat it. Will this surgery completely cure epilepsy? She's 10 years old.
6 Answers
Yes surgery can remove the seizure focus and can eliminate seizures from occurring.
Some types of epilepsy can be completely cured with surgery. Their treating doctor will be able to tell them if they will be cured by the surgery or not.
It can stop or greatly improves seizures in up to 85% of people. Most patients will continue on seizure medication, although it will usually be a reduced amount compared to before the surgery.
It can be very successful in controlling seizures and a “cure” may be possible even though continued treatment with medications may be necessary.
In some cases, yes. If we remove the brain scar causing epilepsy, we can completely cure it in 30% of cases. It only reduces the frequency of seizures.
Before the surgery they have to be able to identify the area of tissue in the brain that is causing the seizures. When they are able to do that, by removing that tissue, it greatly reduces the chance of seizures. There are always unknown factors. Has this seizure tissue triggered other tissue to set off seizures - they likely ruled that out when finding this seizure tissue. Also, the surgery itself will leave scar that can also set off seizures. That’s the beauty of her being so young, young people have amazing healing capabilities. If they have located the tissue that needs to be removed, the surgery has a much better chance of stopping the seizures than trying multiple medications. Of course, there are no guarantees, but these surgeries are usually very successful.
