Prevalence of psychologic disorders after surgical treatment of seizures

To investigate whether surgical treatment of refractory epilepsy is associated with increased risk for serious psychopathology, 25 treated patients were compared with 25 current candidates for surgery matched on demographic and neuroepileptic characteristics. Diagnoses were made by the National Institute of Mental Health Diagnostic Interview Schedule. No differences between groups in lifetime or point prevalence rates were significant. The rate of psychosis in the postoperative group (8%) approximated the lower estimates in previous studies. Thus, surgical treatment of seizures did not increase the risk for psychopathology. However, patients with temporal lobe electroencephalogram foci or tumor as the epileptogenic lesion were more likely to have serious disorders than other patients. Also, anxiety disorders were more prevalent in our patient groups than in the general population.