Georgia is a Caucasian low- to a middle-income country with a remarkable effort to deal with epileptic diseases, but without an appropriate epilepsy surgery program. To address the needs for such a service in this country, two joint German-Georgian projects were initiated in 2017 and 2019. In the framework of these projects, a productive exchange program involving German and Georgian experts was undertaken in the past two years. This program included training and mentoring for Georgian clinical colleagues, as well as a joint case conferences and workshops with the aim of optimizing presurgical diagnostics and preparing for an epilepsy surgery program in Georgia. Finally, a postsurgical medium- and long-term follow-up scheme was organized as the third component of this comprehensive approach. As a result of the efforts, the first patients underwent anterior temporal lobectomy and all of them remain seizure-free up to the present day. Hence, epilepsy surgery is not only feasible but also already available in Georgia. In a report, Dugladze et al. aimed to share their experiences in the initiation and implementation of surgical epilepsy intervention in Georgia and illustrate the recent endeavor and achievements 1).


1)
Dugladze T, Bäuerle P, Kasradze S, et al. Initiating a new national epilepsy surgery program: Experiences gathered in Georgia [published online ahead of print, 2020 Jul 1]. Epilepsy Behav. 2020;111:107259. doi:10.1016/j.yebeh.2020.107259
  • georgia_country.txt
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