Long‐term health‐related quality of life in drug‐resistant temporal lobe epilepsy after anterior temporal lobectomy

Epilepsy surgery is beneficial to patients suffering from drug-resistant temporal lobe epilepsy in the short term, but fewer reports of long-term outcomes have been published. To clarify the long-term outcomes of seizure control and health-related quality of life after epilepsy surgery, we enrolled 48 patients suffering from drug-resistant temporal lobe epilepsy. All of the patients received comprehensive presurgical evaluations, including the Quality of Life in Epilepsy Inventory-89 (QOLIE-89) questionnaire to measure their health-related quality of life. Among the patients, 28 patients received surgery (surgical group) and 20 patients remained under medication (medical group). Eight years later, the seizure frequency and QOLIE-89 were evaluated. The seizure-free rate was much higher in the surgical group (53.6%) than in the medical group (5%), eight years after the initial evaluation. The follow-up QOLIE-89 score was significantly higher in the surgical group than in the medical group. Moreover, the seizure frequency inversely correlated to the QOLIE-89 score, regardless of the treatment group. Our results provide evidence that epilepsy surgery confers benefits with respect to seizure control and health-related quality of life for drug-resistant temporal lobe epilepsy patients based on long-term follow-up.