Abstract
Despite numerous achievements in the treatment of epilepsy, some patients continue to remain unresponsive to drug therapy. In such cases, neurosurgical treatment can become an effective way to reduce the frequency of attacks and improve the quality of life of patients. The purpose of the study: to estimate the influence of the age of the onset of the disease and the time elapsed from the onset to the operation on the effectiveness of neurosurgical intervention in patients with temporal epilepsy. Methods. 93 patients with focal temporal epilepsy took part in this retrospective study. The age of onset was studied for two groups: the group with presurgical diagnosis and the group without presurgical diagnosis. In the main group, the average age at the onset of epilepsy was 8.99 years ±9.06 years, with a minimum value of 0.083 years and a maximum value of 34 years. In the control group, the average age at the onset of epilepsy was 15.97 years ± 12.84 years, with a minimum value of 0.33 years and a maximum value of 44.5 years. Results. Differences in the distribution of causes of epilepsy can be seen by looking at the percentage distribution in each time group. For example, there were no cases of febrile convulsions in the group with a time from the debut to the operation of less than 10 years, while there were 5 cases (25.0%) in the group with a time of 30 years or more. When analyzing the time from debut to surgery (categorized) in each age group, the result of statistical analysis (p<0.001) shows that there are statistically significant differences in the distribution of time from debut to surgery between different age groups. Conclusions. Predictors of effective presurgical diagnosis in patients with temporal epilepsy, such as the age of onset of the disease, duration of epilepsy, type of seizures affect the outcome of neurosurgical intervention and their consideration will allow to determine the most effective personalized treatment strategy for each patient.