TUESDAY, March 6 (HealthDay News) -- Uncontrollable temporal lobe epilepsy affected almost every major aspect of John Keener's life.
Despite trying medication after medication, Keener had to give up driving after he had a serious accident while having a seizure. Because he couldn't drive, he had to drop out of college. Dating seemed an insurmountable challenge because Keener never knew when he might have a seizure.
But in 2006 his "life completely changed" when he underwent surgery for his epilepsy.
"Surgery made a huge difference in my life," said Keener, of Camarillo, Calif. Once he got his license back, he was able to start his own business, and he and his girlfriend, Christine Smith, are celebrating their one-year anniversary.
"Epilepsy is a serious condition and in approximately one-third of patients it won't be controlled by their medications," explained Dr. Jerome Engel Jr., director of the Seizure Disorder Center at the University of California, Los Angeles. "The longer someone waits for surgery when medications aren't working, the less the chance you can help them live a normal life. But, for people with mesial temporal lobe epilepsy, there's about an 80 percent chance of becoming seizure-free after surgery."
Engel is the lead author of a study in the March 7 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association that compared continued medical treatment to surgery in people with mesial temporal lobe epilepsy that wasn't helped by antiepileptic medications.
Epilepsy is a disorder that causes abnormal electrical impulses in certain areas of the brain, according to the U.S. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). These abnormal electrical impulses may trigger a convulsive seizure, also known as a grand mal seizure. But, they can also cause other kinds of seizures, called focal seizures or complex partial seizures, that aren't as easy to recognize.
For example, Keener didn't have the convulsive type of seizures. Instead, he said, he just kind of "vanished for a moment." But, while he wasn't aware of what he was doing when he was having a seizure, he would sometimes still be talking.
NINDS describes this type of seizure as one that alters your state of consciousness. People may begin doing something repetitive, like walking in a circle, or they may continue doing whatever activity they were doing, but they won't have a memory of it. These types of seizures last only a few seconds. This form of epilepsy is often referred to by the area of the brain that's affected. In Engel's study, people with mesial temporal lobe epilepsy were studied.
Many people are helped by antiepileptic medications, but for some, drugs bring no relief. The American Academy of Neurology recommends considering surgery if two different antiepileptic medication regimens don't control seizures. But, in many cases, this isn't happening, and Engel said that the delay in surgery after medication has failed to control seizures can lead to severely diminished quality of life, accidents caused by seizures and even sudden unexplained death.
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When Drugs Fail, Surgery May Get Epilepsy Under Control