For people living with epilepsy who have tried various epilepsy treatments to control their seizures with little success, there is another option. It's a surgery called resection of an epileptic focus, or resective surgery — where surgeons remove or disconnect the area in the brain that is no longer properly functioning and is generating seizures. Dr. Jonathon Parker, a Mayo Clinic neurosurgeon, explains how this surgery works.
Feb. 13 is International Epilepsy Day, a way to provide a platform for people with epilepsy.
"Epilepsy fundamentally is a disorder of the electrical synapses in the electrical fields that are in the brain. It's our job as neurosurgeons to understand where that seizure starts and where it propagates," says Dr. Parker.
