Comprehensive Epilepsy Center - Surgical Division

Phone: 215-955-7000

Online Video: Epilepsy Implants Watch how surgery improved the quality of life for one patient.

Despite the availability of many different types of medication for epilepsy, approximately 35 to 40 percent of patients continue to experience seizures. These seizures often impair quality of life. Seizures can cause bodily injury, progressive impairment of memory and thinking abilities, limit independence, and restrict employment options. Because of these problems, some people with uncontrolled seizures are candidates for surgical treatment.

With one of the largest referral bases and clinical volumes in the country, the Jefferson Comprehensive Epilepsy Center offers a variety of surgical treatments for epilepsy. More than one hundred people are evaluated yearly for epilepsy surgery, and within the past year, seventy operations were performed. The surgical team is multidisciplinary, consisting of neurologists, neurosurgeons, neurophysiologists, neuropsychologists, psychiatrists, and radiologists. All of the expertise from these different specialties are utilized in deciding when to operate and what kind of operation to do. The team is highly experienced, and is internationally recognized.

Here are some important facts about Jefferson's surgical program:

• More than 750 operations have been performed by our team. It is the most experienced team in the greater Philadelphia region.
• All types of surgery for epilepsy are performed, ranging from the most common procedure, anterior temporal lobectomy, to complicated procedures involving removal or disconnection of brain tissue from sensitive areas.
• The Jefferson surgical team actively studies methods of improving surgery, and conducts research in collaboration with other epilepsy centers around the country.

At Jefferson, three types of operations are performed:

• Resective - where a scarred area of brain responsible for seizures is removed. This includes removal of tissue from frontal, temporal parietal and occipital lobes.
• Disconnective - where pathways from one ara to the brain to other areas are interrupted. This includes both corpus callosotomy and multiple subpial transection.
• Vagal nerve stimulation - this is a device placed under the skin in the chest, like a pacemaker, that stimulates the vagus nerve in the neck. 

The current research interests of the program include outcome assessments to determine predictors of surgical success, cortical stimulation as a treatment for seizures, mathematical models of neural activity, investigation of genetic influences on susceptibility for seizures, evaluation of the effect of seizures on heart function, and the biochemistry of receptors and neurotransmitters in epilepsy.

Conclusion

Deciding to have epilepsy surgery is a difficult decision. The staff of the Jefferson Comprehensive Epilepsy Center provides both medical and emotional support for our patients to make their experience as comfortable as possible.