Neurosurgical procedures of established value in the treatment of the medically intractable epilepsies include temporal lobectomy, extratemporal cortical excision, hemispherectomy, and corpus callosotomy. The clinical decision to consider surgery in children with epilepsy requires an understanding of the natural history of pediatric seizures, the constraints of the presurgical evaluation, and the relationship between surgical outcome and tissue pathology. This article presents an overview of the indications, risks, and benefits of epilepsy surgery in the pediatric population. (J Child Neurol 2988;3:255-266).
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