Long-term epilepsy-associated tumours (LEATs) is a pragmatic grouping of varied primary brain tumours that share a number of features including slow indolent growth rate, localisation to the cortex and a predilection for the temporal lobe.
These characteristics combine to make them a common cause of early-onset drug-resistant epilepsy 1. As they are not a histopathologically defined entity, the members of LEAT are somewhat variable across publications but invariably include the following two entities that account for the majority of cases:
gangliogliomas and gangliocytomas (similar but uncommon)
Additionally, depending on the publication, other entities are often included 1-3,5:
It is important to note that many other tumours not included in this list also cause seizures, however, due to their speed of growth and demographics they tend to be identified and treated shortly after treatment onset (e.g. cerebral metastasis, astrocytoma, oligodendroglioma, glioblastoma).