Long-term seizure outcomes following epilepsy surgery: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Assessment of long-term outcomes is essential in brain surgery for epilepsy, which is an irreversible intervention for a chronic condition. Excellent short-term results of resective epilepsy surgery have been established, but less is known about long-term outcomes. We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis of the evidence on this topic. To provide evidence-based estimates of long-term results of various types of epilepsy surgery and to identify sources of variation in results of published studies, we searched Medline, Index Medicus, the Cochrane database, bibliographies of reviews, original articles and book chapters to identify articles published since 1991 that contained > or =20 patients of any…