Abstracts

RATIONALE: Previous research has suggested that the outcome of epilepsy surgery is related to the likelihood of changing marital status after the surgery. Specifically, Carran at al (1999) found that patients who had no recurrent seizures after surgery were more likely to change their marital status than those who continued to have recurrent seizures. As only a few studies have examined the relationship between surgical outcome and changes in marital status, further research is needed. This study is an examination of that relationship. METHODS: The subjects consisted of 135 adult seizure patients, all of whom had undergone surgery for treatment of intractable seizures and who were at least three years post-surgery. For each patient, it was determined if there had been a change in marital status following surgery, and whether they were seizure-free after their surgery. The relationship between surgical outcome and change in marital status was analyzed. RESULTS: In our sample, 29% (n = 39) of the patients changed their marital status post-surgically, while 71% (n = 96) had no change in marital status. The analyses showed no relationship between post-surgical change in marital status and whether or not a patient was seizure-free after surgery. CONCLUSIONS: Unlike the findings of Carran et al (1999), the current results suggest that a seizure-free surgical outcome is not related to an increased likelihood of change in marital status after surgery. An examination of other factors that influence marital status in epilepsy surgery patients is warranted.