Recovery of Language after Left Hemispherectomy in a Sixteen-Year-Old Girl with Late-Onset Seizures

Abstract

Hemispherectomy is a very effective surgical treatment for intractable seizures that occur in the setting of Rasmussen's syndrome. The decision of when to perform a dominant hemispherectomy depends greatly on how late the surgeon believes some shift in language to the nondominant hemisphere can occur. We report a right-handed patient with Rasmussen's syndrome who underwent a left hemispherectomy at the age of 16 and has had excellent control of her seizures and remarkable language recovery. Our results indicate that dominant hemispherectomy in adolescence in the setting of late-onset seizures and Rasmussen's syndrome in the profoundly aphasic patient does not commit the patient to the prognosis of a fixed language deficit.