Cortical dysplasias underlying focal epilepsy

Focal cortical dysplasias are an increasingly recognized etiology of focal epilepsy. Onset often is during early childhood, seizures may be clinically severe and often pharmacoresistant and often lead to impairment of psychomotor development. Progress in imaging techniques allows to increasingly identify focal cortical dysplasias in formerly,cryptogenic" epilepsies which opens the way for successful surgical therapy. Whereas seizure control is achieved in less than 25% of patients by current antiepileptic drugs, epilepsy surgery in specialized centers leads to seizure freedom in up to 60% of patients. In this review, histological, clinical, EEG- and MR characteristics of focal cortical dysplasias as well as therapeutic options are reported.