In this issue of Neurology® Clinical Practice, Habibabadi et al.1 provide an overview of their experience establishing an epilepsy surgery program in Iran. Their approach has focused on surgical treatment of lesional, refractory epilepsy—primarily temporal lobe epilepsy and mesial temporal lobe sclerosis. Although technologically modest, this epilepsy surgery program, the only program in this upper-middle income country of over 80 million people, provided epilepsy surgery to 214 patients over 10 years, with over 80% achieving seizure freedom after surgery. Staffing appears to be entirely composed of local physicians. The team, as described, includes 2 epileptologists, 1 neuroradiologist, 1 neuropsychologist, and 1 neurosurgeon. The authors sum up their findings very well stating, “Personnel trained in seizure semiology, and EEG and MRI methodologies alone, can affect high seizure freedom rates without recourse to expensive, invasive technologies.” Sometimes, less really is more.
Footnotes
Research Outcome of lesional epilepsy surgery: Report of the first comprehensive epilepsy program in Iran Page 286
Author contributions
G.L. Birbeck: drafting/revising the manuscript.
Study funding
No targeted funding reported.
Disclosure
G. Birbeck reports no disclosures relevant to the manuscript. Full disclosure form information provided by the authors is available with the full text of this article at Neurology.org/cp.
Reference
- 1.Habibabadi, Moein, Basiratnia, et al. Outcome of lesional epilepsy surgery: report of the first comprehensive epilepsy program in Iran. Neur Clin Pract 2019;9:286–295. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]