Quebec boy undergoes rare surgery to reduce the severity of his epilepsy

Nine-year-old Samuel Méthot has experienced at least 20 and sometimes up to 50 seizures a day since he was 21 months old.

On Wednesday he underwent brain surgery at the Montreal Children’s Hospital, in an attempt to reduce the amount and severity of his seizures

“It was impossible to refuse this option,” said his mother Meggie Perron.

Méthot has a severe form of epilepsy with developmental delay and neurocognitive impairment and intellectual disability. Perron says her son has tried maybe twenty different kikindsf epilepsy medications, but none have worked, leading him to surgery.

While the relatively rare surgery can’t cure epilepsy, his surgeon says there is a diagnostic component to it.

“So if we can do a disconnection and find out where the seizures actually start on one side of the brain then the patient can become a candidate for focal resection surgery, which has a curative role,” said MUHC pediatric neurosurgeon Dr. Roy Dudley.

Dudley says the roughly 7-hour surgery went well. Méthot is now recovering in hospital with his mother by his side.

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