A rediscovered surgical procedure is providing hope to epileptics who don't benefit from medication. First pioneered in Montreal in the 1930s by the world-renowned neurosurgeon Dr. Wilder Penfield, "the Montreal Procedure" involves the surgical removal of brain tissue at the location of seizure activity. Surgeons determine the location by using diagnostic imaging and by probing a patient's brain with electrodes. More than half of Penfield's patients were successfully treated. Now, because of improvements to diagnostic technology and patient screening, doctors say the success rate for curing seizures is as high as 80 per cent.

In Canada, surgical candidates number around 20,000 out of the estimated 300,000 who suffer from epileptic seizures. But doctors say that 98 per cent of those candidates aren't getting the brain surgery.

"Epilepsy surgery is probably one of the most under-utilized operations of our modern time," said Dr. Taufik Valiante, from Toronto's Krembil Neuroscience Centre, who is one of only 15 neurosurgeons who perform the operation in Canada.