Review Article The Role of Epilepsy Surgery in the Treatment of Childhood Epileptic Encephalopathy

Copyright © 2013 Husam R. Kayyali et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Children with epileptic encephalopathy often have global impairment of brain function and frequent intractable seizures, which contribute further to their developmental disability. Many of these children have identifiable brain lesion on neurological imaging. In such cases, epilepsy surgery may be considered as a treatment option despite the lack of localized epileptic pattern on electroencephalogram (EEG). In this paper, we summarize the clinical features of epileptic encephalopathy syndromes and review the reported literature on the surgical approach to some of these disorders. 1