Epilepsy surgery has been meeting with increasing interest in recent years
but is still underutilized in many European countries. Possible reasons for
the presently recognized epilepsy surgery "boom" in several countries incl
ude the availability of advanced non-invasive diagnostic tools to delineate
epileptogenic lesions and epilepsy-related functional deficits. Improved e
lectrophysiological and surgical techniques are, however, equally important
. All these improvements translate into better postsurgical outcome figures
and into a larger population of difficult-to-treat patients profiting from
surgical therapy. Also, one can recognize an important role of epilepsy su
rgery within the modern neuroscience sphere. A short review and analysis of
the present state of the art of epilepsy surgery in Europe is attempted an
d possible future scenarios for its further development are outlined. The g
rowing need for quality control and multidisciplinary and world-wide collab
oration is emphasized.