Quality of life after surgery for temporal lobe epilepsy: a 5-year follow-up

The authors carried out a 5-year prospective study about the effects epilepsy surgery can have on a patient's quality of life (QOL). They looked for the relationship between improvement on QOL after surgery and reduction of seizure frequency, seizure focus, age at surgery and previous psychopathology. They concluded that improvement in overall, cognitive and social function scores were statistically significant throughout the study. Seizure worry score ceased to be significant at the fifth year. Previous psychopathology was a negative influence on social and seizure worry score. Compared to left lobectomies, right lobectomies showed significant better results in overall scores at six months and one year follow-up. At 1 month follow-up, cognitive function was also significantly better in right lobectomies. Engels class I patients demonstrated statistically better results in the fourth and fifth years of follow-up. Neither years of disease nor patient age at surgery seemed to influence QOL.