Epilepsy surgery is offered to patients whose seizures are not controlled by medical therapy. Patients with epilepsy originating from a single part of the brain may benefit from surgery. The goal of epilepsy surgery is to make patients free of seizures by removal of the tissue or part of the brain causing them without harming the patient. Surgically remediable epilepsies may be caused by tumors, blood vessel abnormalities, scar tissue, or other injuries affecting brain development. The most common types of epilepsy surgery involve the removal of part of the temporal lobe. However, surgeries can be performed in any area of the brain, and, with the help of advanced technologies and clinical experience, these procedures can be both effective and safe. Other surgical therapies include vagal nerve stimulator placement, hemispherectomy or corpus callosotomy.

The epilepsy surgery program at University Hospital is supported by a multidisciplinary team of specialists from the University of Texas Health Science Center and Audie Murphy Veterans’ Administration Hospital. This team includes neurologists with specialization in adult and pediatric epilepsy, neurosurgeons with specialization in epilepsy surgery, neuroradiologists, neuropsychologists and psychiatrists. More than 220 epilepsy surgeries have been performed at the University Hospital since 1996. Over 100 vagal nerve stimulators have been implanted since 1999.