Early Epilepsy Surgery Helps Child Development
Early Epilepsy Surgery Helps Child Development
April 26, 2005 -- Don't wait too long to consider epilepsy surgery for young children, a new study indicates.
Kids who suffer frequent epilepsyseizures don't develop normally. Most have retarded mental and social development.
Seizure control -- with epilepsy drugs or a special diet -- lets children resume normal development. But for some of these kids, drug and diet treatments don't work. A drastic, but often effective option is epilepsy surgery. This surgery removes or disables a well-defined part of the brain responsible for seizures.
In about nine out of 10 cases, surgery reduces seizures. About two out of three surgery patients become seizure-free. But parents worry that brain surgery will harm young children's future development.
Just the opposite is true, suggest Hedwig Freitag, MD, and Ingrid Tuxhorn, MD, of the Bethel Epilepsy Center in Bielefeld, Germany. They studied 50 preschool children -- 40 of them for two to 10 years -- after epilepsy surgery. They found that early surgical treatment prevents further seizure damage and lets kids resume mental and social development.
"[There appears to be] a window of vulnerability for irreversible decline of cognitive potential," Freitag and Tuxhorn write in the April issue of Epilepsia. "Early surgical control of seizures may therefore have a marked impact on the developmental potential of children with early onset, severe epilepsy."
It's good news, says neurologist Gregory L. Barkley, MD, chairman of the Epilepsy Foundation advisory board and vice president of the National Association of Epilepsy Centers. Barkley is also clinical vice chairman of neurology at Henry Ford hospital and an associate professor at Wayne State University.
"This is very reassuring for parents that epilepsy surgery can help children catch up with their peers," Barkley tells WebMD.
Most children with epilepsy don't need surgery, says epilepsy specialist Sandra Helmers, MD, associate professor of neurology at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta. Those who might benefit from surgery have very serious, very frequent seizures.
"These are not typical patients," Helmers tells WebMD. "There are kids in this study that had up to 20 seizures a day. These are all kids who do not respond to medication. What do these kinds of seizures do to a child's brain? How does it interfere with developmental milestones? A number of these kids were retarded, and that is not unusual for such children. And these frequent seizures have an enormous impact not just on these kids but on their families."
Kids who suffer frequent epilepsyseizures don't develop normally. Most have retarded mental and social development.
Seizure control -- with epilepsy drugs or a special diet -- lets children resume normal development. But for some of these kids, drug and diet treatments don't work. A drastic, but often effective option is epilepsy surgery. This surgery removes or disables a well-defined part of the brain responsible for seizures.
In about nine out of 10 cases, surgery reduces seizures. About two out of three surgery patients become seizure-free. But parents worry that brain surgery will harm young children's future development.
Just the opposite is true, suggest Hedwig Freitag, MD, and Ingrid Tuxhorn, MD, of the Bethel Epilepsy Center in Bielefeld, Germany. They studied 50 preschool children -- 40 of them for two to 10 years -- after epilepsy surgery. They found that early surgical treatment prevents further seizure damage and lets kids resume mental and social development.
"[There appears to be] a window of vulnerability for irreversible decline of cognitive potential," Freitag and Tuxhorn write in the April issue of Epilepsia. "Early surgical control of seizures may therefore have a marked impact on the developmental potential of children with early onset, severe epilepsy."
It's good news, says neurologist Gregory L. Barkley, MD, chairman of the Epilepsy Foundation advisory board and vice president of the National Association of Epilepsy Centers. Barkley is also clinical vice chairman of neurology at Henry Ford hospital and an associate professor at Wayne State University.
"This is very reassuring for parents that epilepsy surgery can help children catch up with their peers," Barkley tells WebMD.
Most children with epilepsy don't need surgery, says epilepsy specialist Sandra Helmers, MD, associate professor of neurology at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta. Those who might benefit from surgery have very serious, very frequent seizures.
"These are not typical patients," Helmers tells WebMD. "There are kids in this study that had up to 20 seizures a day. These are all kids who do not respond to medication. What do these kinds of seizures do to a child's brain? How does it interfere with developmental milestones? A number of these kids were retarded, and that is not unusual for such children. And these frequent seizures have an enormous impact not just on these kids but on their families."
