Surgical Treatment of Epilepsy

ing for more difficult cases, especially the use of subdural electrode strips and plates; and (3) perhaps most importantly, increasing recognition of the ravages of uncontrolled epilepsy, including an increased risk for life with uncontrolled generalized seizures.2 Thus a seizure-free patient should be the goal of both medical and surgical therapy, and the outcomes of both should be presented so that the proportion of patients totally seizure-free (and not just with &dquo;major improvement&dquo;) can be determined. In our experience, stopping antiepileptic drugs has a much smaller impact on the lives of most patients than does becoming free of seizure. Thus, we continue some level of antiepileptic drugs in the first postoperative year, even in the seizure-