Invasive explorations in children younger than 3 years.

Purpose: In children with drug-resistant focal epilepsy who are candidates for surgery, invasive exploration is sometimes required. However, this is being controversially discussed for children younger than 3 years. The question of its necessity, feasibility and its risks is often raised, since it concerns primarily lesional epilepsy and a lesionectomy might be proposed right away.

Foramen ovale electrodes in the preoperative evaluation of temporal lobe epilepsy in children.

Purpose: Foramen ovale electrodes (FOEs) can localize the epileptogenic zone in adults with mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). Our aim was to investigate the feasibility and safety of using FOEs to investigate refractory TLE in children.

Methods: Thirty-eight children with seizure semiology and video-EEG (electroencephalography) consistent with medically refractory TLE, and/or the presence of a lesion in the temporal lobe, had FOEs inserted.

Vertical parasagittal hemispherotomy: surgical procedures and clinical long-term outcomes in a population of 83 children.

Objective: Hemispherotomy techniques have been developed to reduce complication rates and achieve the best possible seizure control. We present the results of our pediatric patients who underwent vertical parasagittal hemispherotomy and evaluate the safety and global long-term outcome of this technique.

Methods: Eighty-three patients underwent vertical parasagittal hemispherotomy by the same neurosurgeon (OD) between 1990 and 2000.

The nonmalformed hemisphere is secondarily impaired in young children with hemimegalencephaly: a pre- and postsurgery study with SPECT and EEG.

Purpose: To study separately the functional value of each cerebral hemisphere in hemimegalencephaly (HME). HME is a unique model of unilateral hemispheric lesion, but one suspects that the non-HME hemisphere also could be functionally impaired because the postsurgery outcome is less favorable than expected.

Methods: We performed simultaneous prolonged EEG and 133-xenon SPECT (single-photon emission computed tomography); we measured the absolute values of cerebral blood flow (CBF) in both hemispheres and compared them with the normal values previously acquired.