Focal Cortical Dysplasia in Pediatric Epilepsy

A new perspective on drug-resistant epilepsy in children with focal cortical dysplasia type 1: From challenge to favorable outcome

OBJECTIVE

We comprehensively characterized a large pediatric cohort with focal cortical dysplasia (FCD) type 1 to expand the phenotypic spectrum and to identify predictors of postsurgical outcomes.

METHODS

We included pediatric patients with histopathological diagnosis of isolated FCD type 1 and at least 1 year of postsurgical follow-up. We systematically reanalyzed clinical, electrophysiological, and radiological features. The results of this reanalysis served as independent variables for subsequent statistical analyses of outcome predictors.

RESULTS

All children (N = 31) had drug-resistant epilepsy with varying impacts on neurodevelopment and cognition (presurgical intelligence quotient [IQ]/developmental quotient scores = 32-106). Low presurgical IQ was associated with abnormal slow background electroencephalographic (EEG) activity and disrupted sleep architecture. Scalp EEG showed predominantly multiregional and often bilateral epileptiform activity. Advanced epilepsy magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) protocols identified FCD-specific features in 74.2% of patients (23/31), 17 of whom were initially evaluated as MRI-negative. In six of eight MRI-negative cases, fluorodeoxyglucose-positron emission tomography (PET) and subtraction ictal single photon emission computed tomography coregistered to MRI helped localize the dysplastic cortex. Sixteen patients (51.6%) underwent invasive EEG. By the last follow-up (median = 5 years, interquartile range = 3.3-9 years), seizure freedom was achieved in 71% of patients (22/31), including seven of eight MRI-negative patients. Antiseizure medications were reduced in 21 patients, with complete withdrawal in six. Seizure outcome was predicted by a combination of the following descriptors: age at epilepsy onset, epilepsy duration, long-term invasive EEG, and specific MRI and PET findings.

SIGNIFICANCE

This study highlights the broad phenotypic spectrum of FCD type 1, which spans far beyond the narrow descriptions of previous studies. The applied multilayered presurgical approach helped localize the epileptogenic zone in many previously nonlesional cases, resulting in improved postsurgical seizure outcomes, which are more favorable than previously reported for FCD type 1 patients.

Stereo-electroencephalography (SEEG)-Guided Surgery in Epilepsy With Cingulate Gyrus Involvement: Electrode Implantation Strategies and Postoperative Seizure Outcome

SUMMARY

Surgical treatment of cingulate gyrus epilepsy is associated with good results on seizures despite its rarity and challenging aspects. Invasive EEG monitoring is often mandatory to assess the epileptogenic zone in these patients. To date, only small surgical series have been published, and a consensus about management of these complex cases did not emerge. The authors retrospectively analyzed a large surgical series of patients in whom at least part of the cingulate gyrus was confirmed as included in the epileptogenic zone by means of stereo-electroencephalography and was thus resected. One hundred twenty-seven patients were selected. Stereo-electroencephalography-guided implantation of intracerebral electrodes was performed in the right hemisphere in 62 patients (48.8%) and in the left hemisphere in 44 patients (34.7%), whereas 21 patients (16.5%) underwent bilateral implantations. The median number of implanted electrodes per patient was 13 (interquartile range 12-15). The median number of electrodes targeting the cingulate gyrus was 4 (interquartile range 3-5). The cingulate gyrus was explored bilaterally in 19 patients (15%). Complication rate was 0.8%. A favorable outcome (Engel class I) was obtained in 54.3% of patients, with a median follow-up of 60 months. The chance to obtain seizure freedom increased in cases in whom histologic diagnosis was type-IIb focal cortical dysplasia or tumor (mostly ganglioglioma or dysembryoplastic neuroepithelial tumor) and with male gender. Higher seizure frequency predicted better outcome with a trend toward significance. Our findings suggest that stereo-electroencephalography is a safe and effective methodology in achieving seizure freedom in complex cases of epilepsy with cingulate gyrus involvement.

Using a recurrent neural network with S2 characteristics, efficient identification of localised cortical dysplasia

Focal cortical dysplasia (FCD) is an inborn anomaly in brain growth and morphological deformation in lesions of the brain which induces focal seizures. Neurosurgical therapies were performed for the detection of FCD. Furthermore, it can be overcome through the presurgical evaluation of epilepsy. The surgical result is attained basically through the output of the presurgical output. In preprocessing the process of increasing true positives with the decrease in false negatives occurs which results in an effective outcome. MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) outputs are efficient to predict the FCD lesions through T1- MPRAGE and T2- FLAIR efficient output can be obtained. In our proposed work we extract the S2 features through the testing of T1, T2 images. Using RNN-LSTM (Recurrent neural network-Long short-term memory) test images were trained and the FCD lesions were segmented. The output of our work is compared with the proposed work yields better results compared to the existing system such as artificial neural network (ANN), support vector machine (SVM), and convolution neural network (CNN). This approach obtained an accuracy rate of 0.195% (ANN), 0.20% (SVM), 0.14% (CNN), specificity rate of 0.23% (ANN), 0.15% (SVM), 0.13% (CNN) and sensitivity rate of 0.22% (ANN), 0.14% (SVM), 0.08% (CNN) respectively in comparison with RNN-LSTM.