A new study has suggested that repeat epilepsy surgery aimed at gaining seizure control is likely to be less successful.
The Cleveland Clinic Epilepsy Center in the United States wanted to investigate whether outcomes are improved or not if surgery is attempted again in cases where a person’s first surgery was not deemed a success. The study was the largest to date to investigate this matter.
According to the findings recently published in renowned epilepsy medical journal, Epilepsia, the chances of achieving seizure control decreases with each subsequent surgery.
Surgery is often a last resort for people with epilepsy to gain seizure control. However, just like the individual nature of epilepsy itself, individual outcomes for people who have surgery can vary.
The Cleveland study looked at the outcomes of surgery in 898 patients with focal epilepsy who underwent surgery. 110 of these patients had re-operations (a second surgery) in an effort to gain seizure control. Two years after their initial surgery, the findings reported that:
-69% of patients with no prior surgeries had a positive outcome
-42% of those with one prior surgery had a positive outcome
-33% of those with two or more prior surgeries had a positive outcome
In the study, a positive outcome was defined as being “seizure free or no more than a few early, non-disabling seizures; or seizures upon drug withdrawal only”.
The figures reported have shown that the chances of having a positive outcome decrease with each subsequent surgery. However the researchers have acknowledged that this is an area that needs to be further investigated.
The study has also suggested that alongside the number of previous surgeries, potential factors such as genetics and sex should be a factor in selecting candidates for repeat surgery.
For further reading on this study, visit the Wiley Online Library website.
For more on surgical interventions for epilepsy, visit the 'Epilepsy Surgery' section of our website.