Great progress has been made in the treatment of epilepsy over the past 75 years.
Although medication remains the first step when seizures begin, in some circumstances
surgery is a superior remedy. For those in whom surgery is the right thing
to do, all too often the person is not told about the surgical option and spends years
experiencing recurrent seizures, dealing with adverse effects of medications, and
accruing the mental and psychosocial handicaps engendered by repetitive seizures.
The severity and impact of these handicaps are underappreciated, in part because
the problems appear gradually over years and decades. When the epilepsy begins
in childhood, the handicaps materialize insidiously from stagnation of development
rather than overt regression or loss of previously acquired ability and knowledge