Abstracts

Rationale: Purpose: The aims of this study in patients with mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE) with hippocampal sclerosis (HS) were: (1) to examine employment patterns before and three years after epilepsy surgery and their impact in Quality of Life (QOL); (2) to determine demographic and clinical variables associated with employment. Methods: Methods: Data from 58 patients with diagnosis of refractory MTLE with HS who had corticoamygdalohippocampectomy were analyzed. The subjects answered to a Brazilian validated version of the Epilepsy Surgery Inventory (ESI-55) before, and three years after surgery. In a semi-structured interview, sociodemogrphic and clinical characteristics were obtained. Changes in employment after surgery were classified in one of the three categories: (I) improvement status: -unemployed, no-formal employed, students, housewives and subjects who have never worked- to employed; (II) unchanged status: no change in occupation; this category included subjects who were either employed before and after the surgery, housewives, students, and the group who remained unemployed, receiving ill-health benefits or retired after the surgical treatment; and (III) worsened status -loss of employment. Results: Results: Employment status did not show a significant change after surgery: 51(87.9%) remained unchanged, six (10.3%) had an improvement, and one (1.7%), who was employed before the surgery, obtained retirement. In a subgroup of 22 patients employed after surgery, ten (45.5%) were seizure-free, seven (31.8%) had only rare auras, and five (22.7%) had seizures. In the group of improvement, 12 patients (70.5%) had no-formal employment and five (29.5%) had a formal job before surgery. After three years, 14 (63.6%) of 22 subjects were formally employed. Our data suggested that the employability was strongly correlated (p