Lara Jehi, MD: Evidence Abounds for the Benefits of Epilepsy Surgery

“I hope information like this will [move] the needle. What we’ve always tried to do is come up with data and look at actual information, not sit there and come up with opinions and quantify.”

There can be many objectives of research, with hopes for making a small to large-scale impact. Some may confirm previous findings while other initiatives may be used to attempt to improve the standard of care. Epilepsy specialists like Lara Jehi, MD, have long been looking to propel data that help support the utility of epilepsy surgery, especially for patients with drug-resistant temporal lobe epilepsy (DR-TLE).

Jehi, who is chief research officer and epilepsy specialist at Cleveland Clinic, was the senior author on a recent study that showed that epilepsy surgery is cost-effective across the long-term for those with DR-TLE. She hopes that the data will not only be informative for physicians, but actually help persuade eligible patients to consider taking the next steps toward surgery, even if that starts with a just referral for evaluation.

In an interview with NeurologyLive, Jehi detailed the hope she has for how the data can impact both the patient's and clinician's perspective on epilepsy surgery.