These pages are about surgery in the UK. If you are looking for information about driving laws in another country, please contact your local epilepsy organisation.
What happens during brain surgery for epilepsy will depend on the type of surgery. Most surgery involves making a small opening in the skull to get to the brain. They may remove some bone. Your child would be put to sleep with a general anaesthetic. Rarely, the surgeon may wake them up during part of the operation to locate the part of their brain that controls language and movement. The surgeon will be able to explain this to your child. This is only usually done in children older than 12 years.
After the surgery, the bone is replaced and fixed to the skull for healing. Most epilepsy brain surgery takes at least four to six hours.
After epilepsy brain surgery
After surgery, your child’s head would be swollen and painful. They would need to take painkillers for a few days. The pain and swelling usually involves the face and eyes. It quickly settles after a few days or a week or two.
Your child would need to rest and relax in the first few weeks after the surgery, and gradually become more active. It’s usual for children to stay off school for around two to three months. Children should not play any contact sports for about four to six months.
Generally, children continue to take epilepsy medicine for between six months and two years after the epilepsy surgery. The exact time will vary, depending on whether your child has stopped having seizures completely. It will also depend on what your child’s epilepsy specialist and you think is best for your child. They may be able to reduce, or even stop the medicine after that.
Your epilepsy surgery team will want to keep in touch, to see how your child is doing. Ideally, this will be for several years after the surgery.
Success rates for epilepsy brain surgery
The success rate depends on the type of surgery the child has had. Many children stop having seizures after this surgery. Children who have a temporal resection usually do better than those who have an extra-temporal resection. If they do still have seizures, they usually have a lot fewer than before. If seizures do continue, most children will usually continue to take their epilepsy medicine.
We can provide references and information on the source material we use to write our epilepsy advice and information pages. Please contact our Epilepsy Helpline by email at helpline@epilepsy.org.uk.
Acknowledgement
Epilepsy Action wishes to thank Dr Richard Appleton, consultant paediatric neurologist at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, Liverpool, UK, for help in reviewing this information.
This information has been produced under the terms of The Information Standard.
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