Epidural and foramen-ovale electrodes in the diagnostic evaluation of patients considered for epilepsy surgery (original) (raw)

To evaluate the clinical utility of epidural and foramen-ovale recordings and associated morbidity in the pre-surgical evaluation of epilepsy. We retrospectively analysed 59 epilepsy patients, who underwent recordings with epidural (n = 59) and foramen-ovale electrodes (n = 46) as part of their pre-surgical evaluation between 1990-1999. The epidural and foramen-ovale evaluation was based on the results of the non-invasive EEG-video recordings in patients, in whom non-invasive evaluation failed to localise seizure onset (75%, 44 patients) or where EEG, and imaging studies were discrepant (25%, 15 patients) but allowed a testable hypothesis on the seizure onset zone. Most patients (n = 57) were evaluated between 1990-1994. Only two patients were evaluated later. The results of the epidural (n = 559) and foramen-ovale (n = 83) electrode recordings allowed us to proceed to resective epilepsy surgery in 31% (n = 18) and to exclude further invasive evaluation in 15% (n = 9) of the patient...