Research and recent advances in epilepsy surgery
Can computer models help us improve the planning of epilepsy surgery?
The occurrence of seizures can pose a large burden on the quality of life of people suffering from epilepsy. When anti-epileptic medication is not enough to suppress the seizures, the clinical team often considers a resective surgery: the goal now is to remove the brain areas that are generating or generalizing the seizures. But the outcome is not as good as we would like: currently about 1 in every 3 patients who undergo epilepsy surgery continue to have seizures afterwards. In order to improve this outcome, so that patients have more changes of being seizure free after the resection, at Amsterdam UMC we are developing a computer model, personalized for each individual patient, that will help us identify the best resection for each case.