Abstracts

A large proportion of patients with mesial temporal lobe epilepsy associated with hippocampal sclerosis (MTLE-HS) can be rendered seizure-free after surgery. In these patients, the benefit of surgical treatment seems to extend beyond seizure control, affecting many other aspects of their health and quality of life. Some of these benefits might be quite subjective and because of that might remain underevaluated. Recently, we have validated the Subjective Handicap of Epilepsy scale (SHE) for Brazilian patients. Here, we use SHE scale as a tool to further evaluate the benefits of surgical seizure control in refractory MTLE-HS., A validated version for Brazilian patients of the SHE scale was administered to 74 patients with refractory MTLE-HS during the presurgical evaluation, and to another 89 surgically treated MTLE-HS patients with good seizure control, in a case-control study. To assess seizure outcome we applied Engel[apos]s scale and we definied good seizure control as patients with Engel classes 1. The patients were matched by pre-surgical age, neurophysiological data, and neuroimaging variables. They were also matched by socio-economic level. For numeric variables, we used Mann-Whitney test. For categorical variables we applied Fisher[apos]s exact test. A Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) with Wilks[apos] Lambda multivariate test was used to assess mean differences of the six sub-scales scores of SHE scale. For those, results are expressed in mean (95% C.I.), and were significant if [italic]p[/italic][lt]0.05., The multivariate test showed significant differences between the two groups of patients (Walk[apos]s Lambda = 0,045; [italic]F[/italic](6,156)=554.17; [italic]p[/italic][lt]0.001; observed power = 1.00). The mean results [95 C.I.] of the six sub-scales scores of SHE scale is presented in Table.[table1], Post-surgical good seizure control improves all the six sub-scales scores of SHE in refractory MTLE-HS. Our results strongly support that good post-surgical seizure control in medically refractory MTLE-HS improves health quality of life., (Supported by FAPESP.)