Recommendation of early surgery from the viewpoint of daily quality of life.

We surveyed pre- and postoperative levels of satisfaction with a range of the daily quality-of-life (QOL) domains in 132 sets of epilepsy surgery patients and their families. All patients underwent resective surgery for temporal lobe epilepsy and were monitored for > 2 years. Patient and family assessments showed patients' overall QOL markedly improves after surgery, depending on freedom from seizures. However, factors such as social contacts, family relations, or financial status improved little. Some families and patients were not satisfied with the postsurgical status, despite freedom from seizures. Patients who had surgery at a later age were not so satisfied with their postsurgical status as were patients who had surgery at a younger age, particularly on the QOL domains of role activities, memory function, leisure activities, or emotional well-being. This lower satisfaction level in older patients likely results from a variety of problems affecting patients during the long-lasting epileptic process; social handicaps, psychologic conflicts, and deterioration of cognitive/behavioral functions. Based on each case, we recommend that investigations start at an early stage of the illness, so that surgical intervention may be considered as early as possible.