Quality guidelines for presurgical epilepsy diagnosis and surgical treatment of epilepsy

Presurgical epilepsy diagnosis and the subsequent surgical intervention ser ves the treatment of patients suffering from medically refractory seizures. The goal of epilepsy surgery is to improve the patient's quality of life b y complete seizure control. It is important that after such surgery there s hould not be any additional neurological deficits, i.e. deficits of brain f unction. Because epilepsy surgery represents an elective procedure, the qua lity requirements have to be especially high. Quality control comprises the following aspects: (1) establishment of centers with a minimum of personne l; (2) special training of the personnel; (3) requirements on data collecti on; (4) minimum number of diagnostic and surgical procedures per year; (5) cooperation among the individual centres.