LINAC Radiosurgery for Mesial Temporal Lobe Epilepsy

Stephen Eisenschenck, MD

Epilepsy affects 1% of the population with an incidence of 30 to 50 per 100,000. Approximately one-third of patients remain refractory to standard antiepileptic drug therapy, and new antiepileptic drugs and alternative forms of therapy have had limited benefit. Conventional epilepsy surgery requires the patient to undergo general anesthesia followed by a craniotomy and surgical resection of the epileptic focus. This requires a hospitalization for approximately seven days followed by several weeks of recovery before returning to baseline levels of activity. Utilization of out-patient stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) has been demonstrated to be effective for surgical ablation of cerebral tumors and vascular malformations and has recently been employed for the treatment of medically refractory epilepsy as an alternative to conventional surgery. We have proposed human clinical trials assessing the efficacy of LINAC SRS for the treatment of medically intractable mesial temporal lobe epilepsy utilizing a minimum radiation doses.

fMRI Mapping of Language and Memory Functions in Epilepsy

David Loring, Ph.D.

The purpose of this research study is to learn how the brain analyzes information and how the brain functions to produce behavior. We hope to determine how the performance of different types of tasks affects the blood oxygenation in different areas of the brain. Procedures that will be done for this research include MRI, the tasks of attention, memory, and language, and neuropsychological testing.

Links to other research websites

• Department of Neurology
• McKnight Brain Institute
• University of Florida Epilepsy Research Laboratory
• Epilepsy Neuroprosthetics Research Group