ABSTRACT
Despite impressive advances in the surgical treatments of medically refractory epilepsy, many patients are not candidates for resective procedures or respond poorly to them. In the area of movement disorders, the recent revival of interest in ablative techniques has in turn sparked interest in chronic stimulation of deep brain structures. Stimulation has several advantages over ablation, chiefly reversibility and modifiability. The success and safety of deep brain stimulation (DBS) for movement disorders, as well as the efficacy of vagus nerve stimulation, provide the impetus for investigating the application of deep brain stimulation to epilepsy. In this chapter, the scientific bases and clinical results of stimulation of the thalamus, hippocampus, and subthalamic nucleus are discussed. Other brain targets have been explored, such as the cerebellum, locus coeruleus, caudate, and others, but there is insufficient experience to analyze outcomes; the reader is directed to previous reviews (1).
