Abstracts

Rationale: Cognitive effects of pediatric epilepsy surgery form an important basis for decisions about surgical procedure because children are frequently engaged in activities which demands learning and cognitive tasks. The possible effects of the surgical intervention on cognitive and behavioral outcomes should be predicted and discussed with patient and family. Although seizure outcome after pediatric epilepsy surgery has been well established, less has been known about the cognitive outcome. In the present study, we analyzed the relationship between seizure outcome and cognitive performance in pediatric patients who underwent epilepsy surgery. Methods: We retrospectively analyzed thirty-two epileptic pediatric patients, aged 6 to 16 years that underwent epilepsy surgery between 2002 and 2007 at the Clinical Hospital of the Ribeirão Preto School of Medicine, University of São Paulo, Brazil. Seizure outcome was assessed using the Engel scale. The neuropsychological testing evaluated the following functions: intellectual coefficient (IQ), verbal and visual memory, language activities, attention and visuoperception organization. Descriptive statistics were calculated using standard software and comparisons between pre and post surgical evaluation was made using repeated measures ANOVA. Results: We found an correlation between IQ and seizure control after epilepsy surgery (p=0.005). Patients who had good seizure control (Engel I and Engel II) improved their performance in IQ test and exhibited improvement in verbal memory delay (p=0.02). All patients had naming ability improvement after epilepsy surgery. Conclusions: Our results indicated that epilepsy surgery could benefit cognitive functions in those patients who also experience improvement in seizure outcome. These improvements occurred not only in IQ performance, but also in verbal memory delay. We concluded that successful epilepsy might have a remarkable impact on the cognitive potential of children with refractory epilepsy. Supported by CNPq