title: Revised version of quality guidelines for presurgical epilepsy evaluation and surgical epilepsy therapy issued by the Austrian, German, and Swiss working group on presurgical epilepsy diagnosis and operative epilepsy treatment.
abstract: The definition of minimal standards remains pivotal as a basis for a high standard of care and as a basis for staff allocation or reimbursement. Only limited publications are available regarding the required staffing or methodologic expertise in epilepsy centers. The executive board of the working group (WG) on presurgical epilepsy diagnosis and operative epilepsy treatment published the first guidelines in 2000 for Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. In 2014, revised guidelines were published and the WG decided to publish an unaltered English translation in this report. Because epilepsy surgery is an elective procedure, quality standards are particularly high. As detailed in the first edition of these guidelines, quality control relates to seven different domains: (1) establishing centers with a sufficient number of sufficiently and specifically trained personnel, (2) minimum technical standards and equipment, (3) continuous medical education of employees, (4) surveillance by trained personnel during video electroencephalography (EEG) monitoring (VEM), (5) systematic acquisition of clinical and outcome data, (6) the minimum number of preoperative evaluations and epilepsy surgery procedures, and (7) the cooperation of epilepsy centers. These standards required the certification of the different professions involved and minimum numbers of procedures. In the subsequent decade, quite a number of colleagues were certified by the trinational WG; therefore, the executive board of the WG decided in 2013 to make these standards obligatory. This revised version is particularly relevant given that the German procedure classification explicitly refers to the guidelines of the WG with regard to noninvasive/invasive preoperative video-EEG monitoring and invasive intraoperative diagnostics in epilepsy.
authors.affiliation: Epilepsy Center Frankfurt Rhine-Main, Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany.|Epilepsy Center Hessen, Philipps-University, Marburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Felix
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Rosenow
authors.affiliation: Epilepsy Center Kork, Kehl, Germany.
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Bast
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurosurgery, MUW/AKH, Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Czech
authors.affiliation: Department of Pediatrics and Adolescence Medicine, MUW/AKH, Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Martha
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Feucht
authors.affiliation: Division of Neuropathology, Institute of Pathology, Ruhr University, Bochum, Germany.
authors.forename: Volkmar H
authors.initials: VH
authors.lastname: Hans
authors.affiliation: Department of Epileptology, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany.
authors.forename: Christoph
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Helmstaedter
authors.affiliation: Swiss Epilepsy Center, Zürich, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Hans-Jürgen
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Huppertz
authors.affiliation: Epilepsy Center Munich, Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich, Germany.
authors.forename: Soheyl
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Noachtar
authors.affiliation: Epilepsy Center Berlin-Brandenburg, Berlin, Germany.
authors.forename: Frank
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Oltmanns
authors.affiliation: Epilepsy Center Bethel, Bielefeld, Germany.
authors.forename: Tilman
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Polster
authors.affiliation: EEG and Epilepsy Unit, Geneva University Hospital, Geneva, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Margitta
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Seeck
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, Christian Doppler Medical Centre, Paracelsus Medical University, Salzburg, Austria.|Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, Salzburg, Austria.
authors.forename: Eugen
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Trinka
authors.affiliation: Epilepsy Center Freiburg, Albert-Ludwigs-University, Freiburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Kathrin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Wagner
authors.affiliation: Epilepsy Center Frankfurt Rhine-Main, Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany.|Epilepsy Center Hessen, Philipps-University, Marburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Adam
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-6288-9915
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Strzelczyk
mesh_terms: D001317:Austria; D004569:Electroencephalography; D004827:Epilepsy / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000601:surgery*; D005858:Germany; D006801:Humans; D016343:Monitoring, Intraoperative / Q000592:standards; D019635:Neurosurgical Procedures / Q000592:standards*; D017410:Practice Guidelines as Topic; D011300:Preoperative Care / Q000592:standards*; D013557:Switzerland
keywords: Epilepsy surgery; Guidelines