Abstract:

The prevalence rate of psychiatric symptoms of the refractory epileptic patients was evaluated according to the location of the epileptic focus. The subjects were 91 patients admitted to Epilepsy Monitoring Unit of Seoul National University Hospital. The psychiatric symptoms were assessed by Korean version of Symptom Checklist-90-R(SCL-90-R). The locus of epileptic focus was assessed by clinical features, 2-hour interictal EEG, long-term video-EEG monitoring, brain MRI, interictal and ictal brain SPECT, and interictal brain PET The subjects were divided into three groups according to the epileptic focus, non-temporal(N29), left temporal (N26), and right temporal(N32). There were no statistical differences in demographic and seizure-related variables among groups. The number of patients with T-score geq 65 at any subscale of the SCL-90-R were compared by X^2-test among groups. The mean T-scores of each subscale of the SCL-90-R were compared by oneway-ANOVA among groups. The prevalence rate of psychiatric symptoms of the refractory epileptic patients was 38.5%. There was no statistical difference in the prevalence rate of psychiatric symptoms among groups. However, the patients with non-temporal or right temporal epileptic foci showed statistically significant higher mean T-scores of interpersonal sensitivity, depression, hostility, and phobic subscales than the patients with left temporal epileptic foci. These results suggest that the epileptic focus plays an important role in the production of interictal psychiatric symptoms of the refractory epileptics.