Gamma Knife Surgery for Mesial Temporal Lobe Epilepsy

Object. Gamma knife radiosurgery (GKS) allows precise and complete destruction of chosen target structures containing healthy and/or pathological cells, without causing significant radiation damage to adjacent tissues. Almost all the well-documented cases of radiosurgery for epilepsy are for epilepsies associated with space-occupying lesions. These results prompted the authors to investigate the use of radiosurgery as a new way of treating epilepsy not associated with space-occupying lesions. Methods. To evaluate this new method, 25 patients who presented with drug-resistant mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE) were selected. A follow up of more than 24 months is now available for 16 patients. The preoperative evaluation was performed as it usually is in patients selected for microsurgery for MTLE. In lieu of microsurgery, the treatment of amygdalohippocampal structures was performed using GKS. Thirteen (81%) of these 16 patients are seizure free, and two are improved. The median latent interval from GKS ...