Shorter Epilepsy Duration ‘Linked With Better Surgical Outcomes’

Source: Epilepsy Research UK

People who have lived with temporal lobe epilepsy for only a short time might achieve better post-surgical outcomes than those with longer disease durations, according to a new study.

Published in Arquivos de Neuro-Psiquiatria – the official journal of the Brazilian Academy of Neurology – the research aimed to investigate the influence of a patient’s age and seizure onset on surgical outcomes in temporal lobe epilepsy.

The retrospective observational investigation performed from a cohort of patients from 2000 to 2012 involved 229 patients. Some 62 per cent of patients below the age of 50 were able to achieve freedom from seizures, while the figure was 66 per cent for those aged 50 years or older.

It was shown that 61 per cent of seizure-free patients reported epilepsy duration of less than ten years, compared to only 39 per cent among those affected for more than a decade. By contrast, these ratios stood at 42 per cent and 58 per cent respectively among people who were not seizure-free post-surgery.

The researchers concluded: “Patients with shorter duration of epilepsy before surgery had better postoperative seizure control than patients with longer duration of seizures.”

Read more at Epilepsy Research UK