ABSTRACT
The remarkable growth in awareness of the role surgery may play in the management of the patient with medically intractable epilepsy seen in the previous decade has steadily continued among both physicians and patients with epilepsy. A tremendous increase in the number of medical centers with surgical epilepsy programs, and in the number of patients being so evaluated and treated, was seen through the 1990s, in part stimulated by the first and second international symposia held on the ‘‘Surgical Treatment of the Epilepsies’’ in 1986 (1) and 1991 (2), respectively. This growth has also continued, with increased sophistication and maturity characterizing these many programs. Continued advances in the diagnostic and therapeutic technologies, which play prominent roles in the management of these patients, have driven this evolution, and image-guided surgical techniques are among the most important of these (3).
