Epilepsy Surgery
Preoperative Test
The Wada Test, also known as an amobarbital study, or intracarotid amytal test, in one where a very short acting anesthetic medication is injected into the bloodstream going to the brain in order to determine which side of the brain controls speech and memory.
Epilepsy Surgery
The success of epilepsy surgery is well documented; it is safe and well tolerated, and the majority of patients experience substantial improvement or complete control of their seizures.
Epilepsy surgery has many different variations; temporal lobe resection, extratemporal cortical resection, and corpus callosal section are techniques that may be recommended for patients who will significantly benefit from the surgery.
When resective surgery is not possible, partial corpus callosum sections can relieve seizures and even eliminate injury for some patients with generalized major motor, tonic or atonic seizures.
Temporal and extratemporal cortical resections, lesion resections, hemispherectomies and corpus callosotomies are the main surgeries performed by the neurosurgeons at the California Pacific Epilepsy Center. Other surgical options include vagal nerve stimulation and multiple subpial transections.
