Surgical outcome in thirty-six patients with intractable epilepsy of childhood onset

Thirty-six patients with seizure onset in childhood were selected from surgical cases between December 1985 and April 1995. Thirty patients underwent resective surgery and 6 callosotomy. Patients who had undergone surgery in childhood had a greater reduction in seizure frequency than those patients who underwent any type of epilepsy surgery in adulthood. The greatest reduction in seizure frequency occurred in the temporal resection group followed by the extratemporal resection and callosotomy groups, respectively. When the differences according to adults and children were calculated, the differences were greater in terms of seizure reduction in the childhood group, i.e. 70 vs. 42% in class 1. These differences were statistically significant (p < 0.05). The mean value obtained by counting the scores of seizure frequency reduction in the child-operation group was lower than that in the adult-operation group, although there was no statistically significant difference between them (p < 0.23). In other words, there is a trend toward improvement, but it cannot be stated with certainty whether the results are different between the child-operation group and the adult-operation group. In almost all pediatric patients whose seizures were relieved, an improvement in personality was obtained. This finding suggests that violent or uncontrollable behavior may have been related to the seizures, and surgery resulted in an unambiguous improvement in the quality of life.