Indian Doctors Develop New Surgical Technique To Treat Severe Drug Resistant Epilepsy

Doctors at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Delhi, have developed a novel technique of minimally invasive surgery to perform a complete unilateral hemispheric disconnection of the brain. This procedure is sometimes required for patients especially children who have severe drug resistant epilepsy. The technique was developed by Prof. P. Sarat Chandra, a Neurosurgery Professor at AIIMS.

He said that this technique is usually performed in young children who find it difficult to tolerate large openings and blood loss. The doctor explained that hemispherotomy is a complex surgical procedure, which involves a large cranial incision, followed a major surgery where an entire affected hemisphere is either removed or disconnected from the healthier opposite side.

“The children on whom these procedures are performed are very sick, sometimes having several hundred seizures a day. This is because a whole hemisphere is diseased and is generating severe epilepsy,” noted the physician.

The technique allows the entire procedure to be performed with the use of endoscope through an incision just of size 4X3 cm.

“In addition, the entire surgery is performed using neuro-navigation, a sophisticated computer aided device along with the use of brain suite, where MRI is performed immediately after surgery to confirm complete disconnection,” said Prof. Chandra.

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Source-Medindia