Abstracts

Rationale: Cenobamate is a highly effective antiseizure medication for patients with focal epilepsy, including those being considered for epilepsy surgery. Prior recommendations have suggested patients in this group may benefit from cenobamate, and some may even be able to avoid surgery altogether. This retrospective single-center study evaluated whether surgery was obtained within 12 months for patients who received cenobamate as a treatment during the presurgical evaluation and those who did not, comparing across years before and after cenobamate approval.

Methods: Patients undergoing surgical evaluation for drug resistant focal epilepsy at the University of Colorado during 2018 and 2023 who had at least 12 months of follow up data were analyzed. Comparison years were chosen due to having adequate follow up time (12 months), while avoiding the confounding effect of COVID-19 pandemic on surgical volume (2020-2021). This also allowed for comparison times before and after cenobamate’s FDA approval. The primary outcome (surgery within 12 months) was modeled with potential explanatory variables using multiple logistic regression. A p-value of < .05 was considered significant. Patient characteristics were summarized using descriptive statistics (Table 1).