A Controlled Clinical Trial of Cathodal Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation in Patients With Refractory Epilepsy

There is a continuous necessity for the search of new alternatives for safe, affordable and effective noninvasive therapies for patients that are not eligible for focal resective or palliative surgery. The transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) therapy has demonstrated to be safe, noninvasive, simple and effective with promising results in case series, case reports and animals models for the treatment of intractable epilepsy. tDCS is a feasible and low cost method to modify cortical excitability in a non-invasive procedure. Its effects on cortical excitability seem to be similar to the effects induced by repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation. The aim of this study is determine the safety and efficacy in the reduction of the number of seizures (>50%) and epileptiform activity in patients with refractory and multifocal epilepsy after different protocols of tDCS compared with placebo.