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Updated: Oct 29, 2025
Author Spotlight: Studying Clinical Characters and Epilepsy Outcomes After Frontal Disconnection in Patients with MOGHE
Published on: August 16, 2024
Pregnancy outcomes in women with surgically treated epilepsy
Frank Je Vajda1,2, Terence J O'Brien2, Janet E Graham1
1Department of Medicine and Neurosciences, Royal Melbourne Hospital and University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia.
Objective:
To ascertain whether epileptic seizure control during pregnancy differed between Australian women with previously surgically treated epilepsy, and those with only medically treated epilepsy.
Materials/Methods:
Analysis of data for 74 pregnancies of women with surgically treated focal epilepsy, compared with that from 1013 pregnancies in women with medically treated focal epilepsy, both groups drawn from the Australian Register of Antiepileptic Drugs in Pregnancy between 1999 and 2020.
Results:
Seizures of all types, and also convulsive seizures, were less well controlled during pregnancy in the previously surgically treated cases, the difference for seizures of all types (68.9% versus 50.1%) being statistically significant (p < .05). This result was contrary to the outcome of a previously published study of the same question carried out in India.
Conclusions:
At present, it may be premature to conclude that previous epilepsy surgery will be associated with a better chance of seizure-free, or seizure-controlled, pregnancy.
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