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Surgical Treatment for Epilepsy in Developing Countries—Reply
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In Reply: The issues of the relative paucity of surgical epilepsy programs in the developing world and lack of a sophisticated referral base raised by Drs Malekpour and Sharifi were not discussed in our article, but they are important. Where there is a lack of understanding among physicians regarding the success of surgery in properly selected patients, an aggressive educational approach may lead to an improvement in quality of life. Education may also be cost-effective compared with pharmacotherapeutics. Articles such as ours in widely disseminated medical journals such as JAMA may be useful educational conduits for this type of activity.
Enhanced medical training would then be essential to staff units with physicians capable of bringing these treatments to poor areas. One model is for physicians to train in centers of excellence and receive support from local, state, or federal resources to establish outlying centers. This approach seems reasonable in emerging . . . [Full Text of this Article]
Donald L. Schomer, MD
dschomer@bidmc.harvard.edu
Department of Neurology
Peter M. Black, MD, PhD
Department of Neurosurgery
Harvard University
Boston, Massachusetts
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