J Neurosurg 125:1053–1060, 2016
Epilepsy surgery is of known bene t for drug-resistant temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE); however, a certain number of patients suffer signi cant decline in verbal memory after hippocampectomy. To prevent this disabling compli- cation, a reliable test for predicting postoperative memory decline is greatly desired. Therefore, the authors assessed the value of electrical stimulation of the parahippocampal gyrus (PHG) as a provocation test of verbal memory decline after hippocampectomy on the dominant side.
Methods Eleven right-handed, Japanese-speaking patients with medically intractable left TLE participated in the study. Before surgery, they underwent provocative testing via electrical stimulation of the left PHG during a verbal en- coding task. Their pre- and posthippocampectomy memory function was evaluated according to the Wechsler Memory Scale-Revised (WMS-R) and/or Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) before and 6 months after surgery. The rela- tionship between postsurgical memory decline and results of the provocative test was evaluated.
Results Left hippocampectomy was performed in 7 of the 11 patients. In 3 patients with a positive provocative rec- ognition test, verbal memory function, as assessed by the WMS-R, decreased after hippocampectomy, whereas in 4 patients with a negative provocative recognition test, verbal memory function, as assessed by the WMS-R or MMSE, was preserved.
Conclusions Results of the present study suggest that electrical stimulation of the PHG is a reliable provocative test to predict posthippocampectomy verbal memory decline.
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