AN EXPLORATORY COMPARISON OF 3 METHODS OF MEMORY ASSESSMENT WITH THE INTRACAROTID AMOBARBITAL PROCEDURE

This paper has two objectives. The first is to compare three methods o f amobarbital memory assessment in 172 adults prior to epilepsy surger y. The three methods are significantly different from one another and there was only a moderate degree of concordance between them; concorda nce depended upon the method, the side of surgery, and the side of spe ech. The second objective of the paper is to evaluate the relative abi lities of the methods to differentiate, prior to surgery, patients who did and who did not suffer mild to moderate postoperative losses in v erbal memory following surgery. To meet this objective, a subsample of patients was selected based on the presence or absence of this type o f memory loss. Significant differences in the ability of the amobarbit al methods to identify the patients at risk for postoperative memory l oss were observed, with the method assessing recall memory during drug presence having the best prediction rate. (C) 1997 Academic Press.