Outcome Assessment for Epilepsy Surgery
The Impact of Measuring Health-Related Quality of Life
Published in: Annals of Neurology, v. 37, No. 2, 1995, p. 158-166
Posted on RAND.org on January 01, 1995
The Epilepsy Surgery Inventory (ESI-55), developed at RAND, was used as an external standard to evaluate seven previously published seizure-based (physiologic) outcome classification systems. The ESI-55 was administered to 133 adults who had previously undergone surgery for intractable epilepsy, and results were linked to information about their seizure occurrence before and after surgery. The 133 patients were classified according to each seizure-based outcome system, and variation in HRQOL was evaluated across groups using analysis of variance. Results revealed noteworthy variation in the extent to which different systems reflect patients' HRQOL at follow-up. The authors modified existing systems to develop a seizure-based surgery outcome system that most closely reflects HRQOL. Further studies are needed to derive a standardized, empirically validated outcome system for patients who undergo epilepsy surgery.
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