A follow-up study of cognitive function in young adults who had resective epilepsy surgery in childhood

• Examined cognitive skills in young adults who had epilepsy surgery in childhood
• Compared surgical patients with a group with intractable epilepsy who had not had surgery
• The surgical group with recent seizures had poorer vocabulary and verbal memory.
• The surgical groups improved in vocabulary relative to preoperative performance.
• The vocabulary improvement was irrespective of current seizure status.

This study examined cognitive function in young adults who had epilepsy surgery in childhood. Thirty-seven individuals with medically intractable epilepsy with onset at 16 years or younger who had resective epilepsy surgery at least two years in the past (mean follow-up duration of 8.5 years) were assessed; of these, 13 had seizures within the year prior to the study, and the remainder had none. A comparison group of 16 individuals with childhood-onset intractable epilepsy who had not had surgery, all of whom had experienced at least one seizure in the past 12 months, was also included. The cognitive tests included measures of vocabulary, visuoconstructive ability, memory, and concept formation. Group differences were found only for the vocabulary and verbal memory tests, with the surgical group with seizures having the lowest performance. A subset of the surgical patients had preoperative data available on comparable tests, allowing for an examination of performance over time. Vocabulary scores were higher at follow-up, a finding which was present irrespective of seizure status. The results suggest that after epilepsy surgery in childhood or adolescence, few improvements in cognitive skills related to surgery or seizure outcome are to be expected.