Outcomes Snapshot: Rates of Long-Term Seizure Freedom After Epilepsy Surgery

Cleveland Clinic Epilepsy Center staff recently examined 18 years of epilepsy surgery outcomes data from more than 2,000 patients to evaluate patients’ long-term chances of achieving and maintaining seizure freedom. Seizure outcomes were classified using the widely accepted Engel classification1 of seizure freedom (seizure-free = Engel class 1).

As detailed in the graph and table below, approximately 60 percent of patients with previously medically intractable epilepsy remained seizure-free 10 years after surgical treatment at Cleveland Clinic’s Epilepsy Center. Individual curves for adult patients and pediatric patients who underwent epilepsy surgery at the center from 1996 to 2014 show similar long-term chances of seizure freedom between these two populations.

These data are a sampling of what’s included in the newly released 2014 Outcomes book from Cleveland Clinic’s Neurological Institute. The book is one in a series of Outcomes books issued each year by more than a dozen of Cleveland Clinic’s institutes for the purpose of enabling evaluation of care delivery in common areas of medical and surgical treatment. The books, which are intended for a physician audience, benefit outside clinicians by helping inform potential referral or consultation decisions. The process of outcomes collection and analysis behind the books benefits Cleveland Clinic by guiding continuous improvement efforts and yielding data to generate research questions.

For free access to the online version of the 2014 Neurological Institute Outcomes book, which also includes profiles of new technologies and innovations from the Neurological Institute, click here.

Reference

1. Engel J Jr, Van Ness PC, Rasmussen TB, Ojemann LM. Outcome with respect to epileptic seizures. In: Engel J Jr., ed. Surgical Treatment of the Epilepsies. 2nd ed. New York, NY: Raven Press;1993:609-621.