The goal of epilepsy surgery is to remove some of those dominoes that have been part of the chain. The idea is to remove enough of the dominoes so that even if some of them fall, the chain does not spread widely. In some surgeries, doctors may remove a portion of brain about the size of a tennis ball. This removal interrupts the flow of the electrical storm, and prevents seizures. Before undertaking epilepsy surgery, doctors carefully locate the eye in the center of the brain's storms, to learn where the storm originates and how it moves.
Prospective patients have an extensive workup.
The patient may have a MRI, or Magnetic Resonance Imaging test, in which doctors will look for signs of brain injury. In another kind of scan, doctors inject a small dose of radioactive sugar, looking for patterns of activity in the brain that show where storms have been taking place. The surgeon will only operate if the storm is originating in one, definable part of the brain. In about three out of five people having surgery, the origin is in either the left or right temporal lobe. Specifically, it is often found in the deep part of the temporal lobe, the hippocampus.