CASTANA L

Objective: To study the clinical manifestations induced by intracranial electrical stimulation of the insular cortex in epileptic patients submitted to invasive stereo-electroencephalography (SEEG) recordings. Methods: We retrospectively studied the clinical manifestations induced by intracerebral electrical stimulations of the insular cortex...

Objective: To retrospectively evaluate seizure outcome in a case-series of patients with nodular heterotopy (NH)-related epilepsy treated by stereo-EEG (SEEG)-guided radio-frequency thermocoagulation (RF-THC) of the NH. Methods: Five patients (three male, age 5-33 years) with drug-resistant focal epilepsy presented a single NH at brain MRI....

Object. The authors report on the use of stereoelectroencephalography (stereo-EEG) in the presurgical electroclinical evaluation of infants and very young children with focal drug-resistant epilepsy. Methods. Fifteen patients (9 girls and 6 boys, mean age 34.1 ± 7.3 months, range 21-45 months), potentially candidates to receive surgical...

Purpose: Nocturnal frontal lobe epilepsy (NFLE) is characterized by a wide spectrum of sleep-related motor manifestations of increasing complexity, ranging from major episodes to brief motor events (minor motor events, MMEs). NFLE patients may exhibit a large quantity of MMEs in the form of short-lasting stereotyped movements. Whereas major...

Purpose: We recently demonstrated that in nocturnal frontal lobe epilepsy (NFLE) highly stereotyped minor motor events (MMEs, in the form of short-lasting stereotyped movements involving the limbs, the axial musculature, and/or the head), could occur in either the presence or absence of an epileptiform discharge (ED). In lack of a systematic...

We investigated the anatomo-electro-clinical features and clinical outcome of surgical resections strictly confined to the parietal lobe in 40 consecutive patients who received surgery for pharmacoresistant seizures. The population was subcategorized into a paediatric (11 subjects; mean age at surgery: 7.2+/-3.7 years) and an adult group (29...

Objective The objective of this pilot retrospective study is to describe the SUrface-PRojected FLuid-Attenuation-Inversion-Recovery (SUPR-FLAIR) analysis, a novel method mainly aimed at revealing cortical areas with subtle signal hyperintensity. Methods Images from 101 healthy controls and 10 patients suffering from drug-resistant partial...

Objective: The role of resective surgery in the treatment of polymicrogyria (PMG)–related focal epilepsy is uncertain. Our aim was to retrospectively evaluate the seizure outcome in a consecutive series of patients with PMG-related epilepsy who received, or did not receive, surgical treatment, and to outline the clinical characteristics of...

The aim of this retrospective case series analysis was to identify the predictors of postoperative depression (PostOp-D) in a sample of 248 subjects with focal drug-resistant focal epilepsy. The presence or absence of PostOp-D during a 12-month follow-up period was the outcome variable. Demographic, neurologic, psychiatric characteristics, and...

Posterior cortex epilepsy surgery is rarely performed and is associated with a high number of surgical failures, partly because accurate localization of the epileptogenic zone in the posterior part of the brain is extremely difficult. We present the characteristics as well as the surgical outcome and its determinants of a cohort of 208...

OBJECT Radiofrequency thermocoagulation (RF-TC) of presumed epileptogenic lesions and/or structures has gained new popularity as a treatment option for drug-resistant focal epilepsy, mainly in patients with mesial temporal lobe epilepsy. The role of this minimally invasive procedure in more complex cases of drug-resistant epilepsy, which may...

Purpose: To retrospectively analyze the results on seizures of surgery in children with drug-resistant focal epilepsy. To identify the factors predicting seizure control among several presurgical, surgical, and postsurgical variables. Methods: One hundred thirteen patients (67 male, 46 female), younger than 16 years, operated on from 1996 to...

Purpose: Sleep-related complex motor seizures are a common feature of nocturnal frontal lobe epilepsy. Nevertheless, recent studies also suggest that sleep-related hypermotor seizures can originate in the insula. The present study describes the electroclinical features of eight drug-resistant epileptic patients with insular-opercular seizures...

In this study we report the results of surgery in a large population of patients affected by drug-resistant focal sleep related epilepsy (SRE) and the identified prognostic factors. We conducted a retrospective analysis of a case series of 955 patients operated on for drug-resistant focal epilepsy from 1997 to 2009. Ninety-five patients with...

PURPOSE: To analyze the topography of the epileptogenic zone (EZ) and the etiologic substrate as risk factors for sleep-related focal epilepsy. METHODS: Three hundred three patients (172 males and 131 females, mean age at surgery 25.6 +/- 13.1 years), who were seizure-free after resective surgery for drug-resistant focal epilepsy, were...