The place of surgery in epileptic children and adolescents with mesial temporal (Ammon's horn) sclerosis

Abstract

MESIAL temporal sclerosis, or Ammon's horn sclerosis, as it used to be called, is the commonest single lesion to be found at autopsy in the brains of epileptic patients who die a natural death. Whenever it does occur, it is unilateral in 80 per cent of instances. Recent evidence suggests that, although there may be some genetic factor, it is really an acquired lesion, and is commonly the result of some hypoxic episode occurring in infancy, such as a severe febrile convulsion. Post-natal and birth injuries play but little part.