epilepsy surgery

Spend another morning reading more on the epilepsy operation:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4719181.stm

http://www.med.nyu.edu/neurosurgery/epilepsy/conditions/benefits.html

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/story?id=7885128&page=1

let me list down some points for my consideration:

risk/facts:

• "The scariest thing when you are operating on the brain is when you get bleeding that you can't control. Sometimes it gets very hairy."
• There is also a risk that nearby brain structures that control functions such as speech and vision will be damaged.
• developed a blood clot after the surgery
• the extent of tissue that had to be removed, she has lost some peripheral vision and can no longer see things clearly to her right.
• Epilepsy surgery is not considered unless seizures are not controlled with medications. The surgery has a likelihood of completely controlling the seizures from 50% to 95% of the time depending on the epilepsy syndrome treated and the operation performed.
• The most important risk of epilepsy surgery is nonreversible injury to the brain due to intracranial hemorrhage (bleeding) or stroke. Infection is one of the most common complications, but unlike infection, stroke or hemorrhage most often leaves the patient with a neurological deficit that may be disabling. This complication occurs in about 1% of the craniotomies performed.
• Though an individual seizure by itself is not very dangerous, recurrent seizures do represent important accumulated risks over time. If the summed risk of recurrent seizures over 5 or 10 years is considered, then the risk to serious injury resulting in permanent disability is probably well over 1% or 2%, and for some people with epilepsy this is even higher.
• Temporal lobe epilepsy is the most thoroughly understood epilepsy syndrome. One kind of temporal lobe epilepsy called mesial temporal lobe epilepsy is the model for epilepsy surgery. People with medically refractory epilepsy who have mesial temporal lobe epilepsy can be offered up to a 95% chance of complete seizure control with a single surgical procedure called an anterior mesial temporal lobectomy (or sometimes referred to as amygdala-hippocampectomy.)
• The most common problem once discharged from the hospital is wound infection.
• "Sometimes, after general anesthetic, people have this honeymoon period where seizures go away. But then they come back,"