Surgical treatment of hemispheric epilepsy has progressively evolved from anatomical hemispherectomy to functional hemispherectomy and more recently to hemispherotomy. These developments in the surgical technique have to a large extent avoided the complications associated with large brain excisions and at the same time maintained the excellent seizure outcome associated with the surgical treatm...

This study reports on functional morpheme (I, D, and C) production in the spontaneous speech of five pairs of children who have undergone hemispherectomy, matching each pair for etiology and age at symptom onset, surgery, and testing. Our results show that following left hemispherectomy (LH), children evidence a greater error rate in the use of functional category elements than their right hemi...

I n 3 children who had undergone cerebral hemispherectomy (hemidecortication) between the ages of 1 year 5 months and 4 years for the alleviation of intractable epilepsy, cerebral glucose utilization was studied serially with positron emission tomography. Three to 7 months after hemispherectomy, glucose utilization i n the caudate nuclei on the side of hemispherectomy had decreased to below pre...

Hemispherectomy is a highly effective treatment option for children with severe, unilateral, medically refractory epilepsy. Many patients undergoing hemispherectomy are younger patients with dysmorphic brains, making accomplishing a complete disconnection challenging due to anatomic distortion, even with the aid of intraoperative navigation. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) has been proposed as a...

Multilobar resection and hemispherectomy are surgical options available for the treatment of medically intractable seizures arising from a diffuse area of epileptogenicity that remains unilateral but extends beyond one lobe. The nature and extent of the underlying pathologic process, the patient’s neurologic status, and the results of preoperative neurophysiologic and neuroimaging studies toget...

We studied the spoken language of 49 children who had undergone hemispherectomy as part of the UCLA Pediatric Epilepsy Surgery Research Program and analyzed, among a number of clinical factors, the relation between acquired vs developmental pathology and spoken language outcomes. In this paper we will briefly review the results of our study and attempt to explain (1) why "the early" is not alwa...

BACKGROUND Rasmussen encephalitis (RE) is a rare and severe brain disorder associated with unilateral hemispheric atrophy, manifesting as severe refractory epilepsy, hemiplegia, defects of motor and speech functions, and cognitive impairment. Treatment of RE, especially in adult patients, is extremely challenging. Herein, we report the case of an adult patient with RE who was treated with a fun...