Foreword

The etiology rather than the localization of a given epilepsy syndrome frequently determines the approach to the presurgical diagnosis as well as the postoperative outcome. This is reflected in the recent proposal of the ILAE Commission on Classification and Terminology which states that “less emphasis should be given to the localization and more to the underlying structural or metabolic cause of ....”.
Because of these considerations we decided to dedicate the 4^th International Epilepsy Colloquium (IEC) on epilepsy surgery for remote symptomatic epilepsies, namely epilepsies caused by an “acquired structural lesion” including post traumatic brain injury, remote vascular lesions, brain tumors, inflammatory lesions and vascular malformations such as cavernomas.
In this Colloquium we will place special emphasis in the discussion of epilepsies caused by cavernous hemangiomas which can serve as a model for our approach to lesional epilepsies in general.
In these epilepsies there is usually a very well defined, relatively small lesion (the cavernoma itself) and a surrounding hemosiderin rim. Currently only about 70 – 80% of patients with a focal epilepsy caused by a cavernoma are rendered seizure free postoperatively depending on characteristics of the epilepsy (such as duration) and most likely also the resection strategy (lesionectomy vs. topectomy).
The Colloquium will serve to intensively discuss the pathophysiology and current treatment approaches to epilepsies caused by clearly defined, relatively well circumscribed lesions.
An in depth evaluation of these epilepsies will hopefully point to surgical strategies which could improve surgical outcome not only in these special types of epilepsies but of epilepsy surgery in general.

We cordially invite you to Marburg from June 27^th to 30^th 2011 to meet and discuss these issues.

Felix Rosenow