risk factors of temprol lobe surgery

[vagellie007]

Hello all, i was just old i was a canidate for right temprol lobe surgery, my question is, what are the odds of success? are there side affects , and what are the chances of things going wrong like memory loss or no recalection of anything, its a very scary thought and any help would be good . i've been trying to find statistics on this but have no luck ty

[Cint]

I had a Left temporal lobectomy back in 1990 and was seizure free for 18 months. My memory is much worse now and I do suffer from aphasia (difficulty finding a descriptive word).

From www.epilepsy.com:

TEMPORAL LOBECTOMY
Temporal lobectomy is the removal of a portion of the temporal lobe of the brain. It is the most common type of epilepsy surgery and is also the most successful type: After surgery, 60% to 70% of patients are free of seizures that impair consciousness or cause abnormal movements. Some of these patients still experience auras, sensations (odors, for instance) without an outside source.

20% to 25% of patients still have some complex partial or tonic-clonic seizures but the number of seizures is reduced by more than 85%.

10% to 15% of patients have no worthwhile improvement.

Therefore, more than 85% of patients who have had a temporal lobectomy enjoy a great improvement in seizure control. Most patients need to continue taking seizure medicines, but they usually need less. About 25% of the patients who become seizure-free eventually can stop taking their seizure medicines.

Topic Editor: Howard L. Weiner, M.D.

[epileric]

I would ask your neurologist what the odds of success are & what studies s/he is basing their answer on and how many people were in the study (the more the better).

Google Scholar is also good if you want to search for studies yourself

[Belinda1961]

The RTL that I don't know what the odds were, that it would work. Scar tissue was removed from my temporal lobe.My seizures got worse as I got older.
But than my seizures were on both sides also.

Belinda

[DayDreamer]

I like to look up articles in neurological/epilepsy journals on pubmed. If you don't have access to their full text through a nearby university, the occasional free full text and abstracts available from home provide a good synopsis.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/

[LMReggcellent]

I had a right temporal lobectomy in 04. The risks I knew going into it was loss of memory, vision, and potentially some speech. I since haven't had a change in speech or vision, and if I wanted to I could blame something I forgot on that surgery but it probably wouldn't be valid. The RTL worked for me for 6.5 months and then my complex partial seizures came back just enough to notice and take away my driving privilege but I started more tonic clonic, which had been controlled before surgery. Good luck.