POSTOPERATIVE PSYCHOSES IN EPILEPTIC PATIENTS AFTER TEMPORAL LOBECTOMY

Introduction - Psychosis is the most severe psychiatric complication a fter epilepsy surgery. Patients and methods - We evaluated postoperati vely at 1 year the psychoses of a series of 57 adult patients with int ractable epilepsy who underwent temporal lobe surgery. Results - Five patients (8.8%) developed postoperative psychosis. Two (3.5%) of these 5 revealed postictal psychotic episodes in connection with persisting seizures, both of them had had similar episodes even preoperatively. Two patients (3.5%) exhibited a definite and one patient (1.8%) a prob able de novo schizophrenia. Conclusion - Our findings clearly emphasiz e the need for careful postoperative psychiatric follow-up for patient s with temporal lobectomy.