The evaluation of correlations between preoperative examination results, prognosis and pathology results in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy

Epilepsy surgery is an advanced treatment approach for patients with drug resistant seizures, who comprise 20% of epilepsy patients. Clinical evaluation, long-term video-EEG monitoring, neuroimaging modalities such as MRI, MRS and, PET CT and neuropsychological testing are used in order to localize the epileptic focus. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the correlation between preoperative tests and histopathological results, together with the clinical outcomes of intractable MTLE patients, who underwent temporal lobe resection surgery. Thirty-five patients with intractable TLE were included. As a result of our study; the contribution of PET CT and Brain MRI for the localization of the epileptic focus was similar to Video EEG, while routine EEG and MRS was found to have lesser benefit. PET CT had a high lateralization value and significant sensitivity (100%) while this value was 97.1% for Brain MRI, 82.9% for routine EEG, and 79.4% for MRS. Postoperative histopathological assessment of our series were compatible with hippocampal sclerosis in 71.4%. In our study, the outcome after 6 months and one year according to Engel classification was Ia in 82.8% of the patients, however it was 74.3% after two years. Key Words: TLE, epilepsy surgery, video-EEG monitoring