Early total corpus callosotomy in a patient with cryptogenic West syndrome

West syndrome is a generalized epileptic syndrome of infancy, that is characterized by clinical spasms and hypsarrhythmia and usually has an onset age before two years old. Children affected by West syndrome have a high risk of severe psychomotor developmental delay. Infants with West syndrome without identification of underlying neurological disorder after adequate investigations are classified as ‘‘cryptogenic’’ and usually have better prognoses than children with ‘‘symptomatic’’ West syndrome. Early seizure cessation, particularly among cryptogenic cases, may cure the disease and allow a good neurodevelopmental outcome. Corpus callosotomy was first introduced as a palliative treatment for epilepsy in 1940 and is performed in patients whose seizures are not amenable to surgical focal resection. West syndrome is often medically intractable and has features of ‘‘generalized’’ epilepsy, but corpus callosotomy has not been discussed widely as a treatment strategy. Given the catastrophic nature of West syndrome, an early indication for total corpus callosotomy may be appropriate. Here, we describe a case that was diagnosed as cryptogenic West syndrome, in which the epileptogenic focus was defined after total corpus callosotomy.