Clinical Trial Examines Non-invasive Surgery Options for Epileptic Patients

Medications do not effectively control epilepsy and stop seizures for about 25 percent of patients who suffer from the disease. Instead, surgery is the answer for some epileptic patients. In the past, this meant a craniotomy, which requires a surgeon to open the patient’s skull and remove the brain lesion-causing epilepsy.

University of Virginia School of Medicine neurologist Mark S. Quigg, MD, is helping to lead an international clinical trial examining the effectiveness of Gamma Knife radiosurgery as a non-invasive alternative for treating patients with a certain type of epilepsy — mesial temporal lobe epilepsy. The Gamma Knife delivers focused beams of radiation guided by MRI to the brain lesion in hopes of damaging the lesion and preventing it from causing epileptic seizures. For more information, click here to read the full release.