If medication and other treatments aren't enough to control your epilepsy symptoms, your doctor may recommend surgery. Surgery for epilepsy removes the area of the brain where seizures happen.
Because of this, epilepsy surgery is best when your seizures happen in just one part of your brain.
Types of epilepsy surgery include:
- Resective surgery: A small portion of the brain is removed from the area where seizures happen. This is the most common epilepsy surgery and is usually done in one of the temporal lobes.
- Laser interstitial thermal therapy: Uses a laser to destroy a small piece of brain tissue.
- Corpus callosotomy: The part of the brain that connects the right and left sides of the brain (the corpus callosum) is partially or completely removed. This surgery is usually done in children who have irregular brain activity on both sides of their brain.
- Hemispherectomy: One side of the brain, called the cerebral cortex, is removed. This is usually done in children with a condition that leads to seizures in multiple places in one half of the brain.