Vagus nerve stimulation of patients with medically intractable epilepsy – long term results

Objective: The vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) for medically intractable epilepsy has already become a widely accepted treatment option for this clinical entity. Nevertheless, long term efficiency still remains controversial. We analyzed 21 patients with a follow up period up to 6 years. Methods: Since 1998 the VNS has been established at our institutions. From this time we operated on more than 40 patients with refractory epilepsy. The implantation of VN-stimulators (Cyberonics VNS) was done via the standard approach. The presented data include 21 patients (10 female, 11 male; average age 37.5 years) with a minim…