Long-term seizure outcomes following epilepsy surgery: a systematic review and metaanalysis

Assessment of long-term outcomes is essential in brain surgery for epilepsy, which is an irreversible intervention for a chronic condition. Excellent short-term results of resective epilepsy surgery have been established, but less is known about long-term outcomes. We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis of the evidence on this topic. To provide evidence-based estimates of long-term results of various types of epilepsy surgery and to identify sources of variation in results of published stud-ies, we searched Medline, Index Medicus, the Cochrane database, bibliographies of reviews, original articles and book chapters to identify articles published since 1991 that contained>20 patients of any age, undergoing resect-ive or non-resective epilepsy surgery, and followed for a mean/median of>5 years. Two reviewers independentl