Background: Some patients suffering from intractable epileptic seizures, particularly drop attacks (DAs), are nonremediable by curative techniques. Palliative procedure carries a significant rate of surgical and neurological complications.
Objective: To propose evaluation of safety and efficacy of Gamma Knife corpus callosotomy (GK-CC) as an alternative to microsurgical corpus callosotomy.
Methods: This study included retrospective analysis of 19 patients who underwent GK-CC between 2005 and 2017.
Results: Of the 19 patients, 13 (68%) had improvement in seizure control and 6 had no significant improvement. Of the 13/19 (68%) with improvement in seizures, 3 (16%) became completely seizure-free, 2 (11%) became free of DA and generalized tonic-clonic but with residual other seizures, 3 (16%) became free of DA only, and 5 (26%) had >50% reduction in frequency of all seizure types. In the 6 (31%) patients with no appreciable improvement, there were residual untreated commissural fibers and incomplete callosotomy rather than failure of Gamma Knife to disconnect. Seven patients showed a transient mild complication (37% of patients, 33% of the procedures). No permanent complication or neurological consequence was observed during the clinical and radiological workup with a mean of 89 (42-181) months, except 1 patient who had no improvement of epilepsy and then aggravation of the pre-existing cognitive and walking difficulties (Lennox-Gastaut). The median time of improvement after GK-CC was 3 (1-6) months.
Conclusion: Gamma Knife callosotomy is safe and accurate with comparable efficacy to open callosotomy in this cohort of patients with intractable epilepsy suffering from severe drop attacks.
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