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Considering Surgery

Mon, 01/17/2005 - 11:30
Topic: Surgery and Devices
My 15 year old son's neurologists want to send him to an epilepsy clinic (UCLA) to evaluate him as a candidate for surgery. Right now I am very against him having any surgery and so I am not in favor of this evaluation. Is there any benefit for having the evaluation for surgery even if you have no intention of ever having the operation. Here's some background. My son has been diagnosed with left temporal lobe, partial complex seizures. He's currently on Trilepal and Keppra. He's only tried two other meds. Right now he's developed a pattern to where he will go seizure free for 2 to 3 weeks. Then in about 3 days, he'll have several seizures. The worst has been 4 in one day. Then will go seizure free for a couple more weeks. He started this pattern since he's been on the Keppra last May.

Comments

RE: RE: RE: RE: Considering Surgery

Submitted by janb on Thu, 2005-03-17 - 15:34

hello,

my adult daughter went  and did all the test the the strips on the brain and the monitor and come to find out she was not a canadite for the surgery

her dr's back when she was 15 yrs old kept asking let do surgery and we kept saying no so now she is a 33 yr old adult with seizures and they cannot control them even with the med

and she has tried all of them now she is back on keppra and topamas and colosapam and very high doses

she also has the VNS and it is on level 8 and turns on every 3 min for 30 sec we are going to the baylor coll of ep in hou,tx

and she will be getting it turned up on more notch this month

its a hard road

good luck

hello,

my adult daughter went  and did all the test the the strips on the brain and the monitor and come to find out she was not a canadite for the surgery

her dr's back when she was 15 yrs old kept asking let do surgery and we kept saying no so now she is a 33 yr old adult with seizures and they cannot control them even with the med

and she has tried all of them now she is back on keppra and topamas and colosapam and very high doses

she also has the VNS and it is on level 8 and turns on every 3 min for 30 sec we are going to the baylor coll of ep in hou,tx

and she will be getting it turned up on more notch this month

its a hard road

good luck

RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: Considering Surgery

Submitted by novembersea on Thu, 2005-03-17 - 16:44
My son goes to Loma Linda, and I found out his EEG has temporal lobe spikes every 10 seconds. He is my ONLY child too. How are your son's EEG's, and also how has his seizure activity been through his life. My son started with febrile, normal EEG's...then age 3 without fevers then EEG got bad at age 8 with a bout of seizures from March-August, then 18 months without. I am scared why his EEG is so bad, and how hard is it to get into a second opinion at UCLA? I am petrified with what the EEG said...please advise? All I got was, maybe he has a enzyme missing, and lets do another MRI, more indepthed one...I'm a basket case

RE: RE: RE: Considering Surgery

Submitted by e_nuffofthis on Sat, 2004-11-27 - 10:48

That's not true.  Temporal has the highest percentage of success.  Remember on-line, usually it's the people with worse case senerios.  It all depends on exactly where the seizures originate and what is causing the seizures.  It's important you go to a renowned epilepsy center also.  A couple opinions are necessary also.  You can google "left temporal lobe surgery" and get lots of papers explaining various instances and percentages of success. 

I don't blame you at all for being scared and I know there isn't a 100 percent guarantee.  But at least if at some point you decide, you will have lots of information and with the monitoring you will have your options in front of you.

Best of luck.

 

 

 

That's not true.  Temporal has the highest percentage of success.  Remember on-line, usually it's the people with worse case senerios.  It all depends on exactly where the seizures originate and what is causing the seizures.  It's important you go to a renowned epilepsy center also.  A couple opinions are necessary also.  You can google "left temporal lobe surgery" and get lots of papers explaining various instances and percentages of success. 

I don't blame you at all for being scared and I know there isn't a 100 percent guarantee.  But at least if at some point you decide, you will have lots of information and with the monitoring you will have your options in front of you.

Best of luck.

 

 

 

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