Epilepsy surgery in Europe: Developments in the last decade and present state

Epilepsy surgery has been meeting with increasing interest in recent years but is still underutilized in many European countries. Possible reasons for the presently recognized epilepsy surgery "boom" in several countries include the availability of advanced non-invasive diagnostic tools to delineate epileptogenic lesions and epilepsy-related functional deficits. Improved electrophysiological and surgical techniques are, however, equally important. All these improvements translate into better postsurgical outcome figures and into a larger population of difficult-to-treat patients profiting from surgical therapy. Also, one can recognize an important role of epilepsy surgery within the modern neuroscience sphere. A short review and analysis of the present state of the art of epilepsy surgery in Europe is attempted and possible future scenarios for its further development are outlined. The growing need for quality control and multidisciplinary and world-wide collaboration is emphasized.