Author Interviews, Epilepsy, NEJM, Neurological Disorders, Pediatrics, Surgical Research / 25.10.2017
Early Surgery for Drug Resistant Epilepsy May Limit Cognitive Disabilities
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Dr. Manjari Tripathi Professor, Epileptology, Neurology
Dr. P Sarat Chandra, Chief epilepsy Neurosurgeon
AIIMS, New Delhi
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?:
- Surgery for drug resistant epilepsy (DRE) is an accepted procedure for children and there have been multiple surgical series and surgical techniques published in literature. However, till date there are no randomized controlled trials (RCT) available to objectively demonstrate the safety and efficacy of surgical therapy in children with DRE. There are till date only 2 randomized trials for adult patients with drug resistant epilepsy (both for mesial temporal sclerosis only, Wiebe S et al, New Eng J Med, 2001 & Engel J et al, JAMA, 2012).
- Children constitute a significant proportion of patients undergoing surgical therapy for DRE (close to 50% in tertiary centers). They have unique problems associated due to uncontrolled epilepsy and some of these include epileptic encephalopathy and status epilepticus. In addition, surgery is also associated with problems like hypothermia, issues related to blood loss etc. Thus the senior author (Manjari Tripathi) and her team felt that a RCT would be very important to objectively assess the role of surgery and hence designed this study.