When surgery is indicated, a neurosurgeon operates to remove the affected brain tissue. The most common resection is for people with epilepsy located at the temporal lobe, at the brain's outer lower region. The surgery results in reduction or elimination of seizure activity between 70 and 90 percent of the time. Corpus callosotomy . When seizures originate in one half of the brain and spread to the other, a corpus callosotomy can be performed to sever the neural connections between the brain's two hemispheres.
Corpus callosotomy can also keep seizures from spreading to other areas of the brain.
However, partial seizures may increase after surgery. As the name suggests, this surgery involves removal of about half of the brain, or a hemisphere. Hemispherectomy usually is reserved for children with severe, frequent, and often life-threatening epilepsy that cannot be controlled by medication. Removing half of someone's brain is, indeed, a radical concept, and there may besome very serious complications, including fluid build-up in the brain, infection, and coma. There is permanent loss of hand mobility on the side opposite of the removed hemisphere, and vision also may be affected.