Epilepsy surgery in patients with additional psychogenic seizures

To assess whether surgery to reduce or control epileptic seizures is safe and effective in patients known to have additional psychogenic seizures.

We reviewed our computerized database of 1342 patients examined for epilepsy surgery and identified 13 patients with both epileptic and psychogenic seizures on whom postoperative outcome data were available. Data were gathered from the patients' records. Mean postoperative follow-up was 56 months.

Epilepsy surgery led to clinically relevant improvements in 11 of 13 patients. Seven patients became free of epileptic and psychogenic seizures, 2 patients became free of epileptic seizures but continued to have infrequent psychogenic seizures, 1 patient reported more than an 80% improvement in epileptic seizure frequency and an abolishment of psychogenic attacks, and in 1 patient nondisabling epileptic seizures persisted at lower frequency but psychogenic seizures stopped. In 2 of 13 patients, epilepsy surgery failed to produce notable improvements. Although 1 patient became free of epileptic attacks and the other had fewer than 3 epileptic seizures per year, the severity or frequency of psychogenic seizures and pseudo-status epilepticus increased postoperatively. One of these patients had a preoperative diagnosis of somatization disorder; in the other, pathological illness behavior had been noted.

A diagnosis of additional psychogenic seizures should not be considered an absolute contraindication to epilepsy surgery, although patients should undergo careful preoperative psychiatric evaluation.