IMPROVEMENT OF QUALITY-OF-LIFE FOLLOWING RESECTIVE SURGERY FOR TEMPORAL-LOBE EPILEPSY - RESULTS OF PATIENT AND FAMILY ASSESSMENTS

In order to evaluate the quality-of-life (QOL) of epilepsy surgery pat ients, we surveyed patients' degree of life satisfaction and their fam ilies' degree of satisfaction with patient's status in a range of doma ins both pre- and post-operatively. Of 100 patient-family sets of surv eys that were mailed out, 93 were completed and returned from patients and 91 from their families. All patients surveyed had temporal lobe e pilepsy and had been followed for longer than 2 years after resective surgery. Patients and their families rated overall QOL as having marke dly improved following surgery. However, they rated social domains of QOL, including role activities, financial status, and social and famil y relationships as having improved relatively little. Despite freedom from seizures, a few patients' families were dissatisfied with the pat ients' post-operative status, primarily for psychosocial reasons. Pati ents operated on at a later age reported little gains in life satisfac tion following surgery. This study supports the conclusion that surgic al intervention should occur before patients are subjected to the psyc hological conflicts and social handicaps associated with chronic intra ctable epilepsy.