Purpose: To characterize features influencing marital status in a group of patients with refractory epilepsy before and after epilepsy surgery and to assess the effect of seizure control on marital status after epilepsy surgery.
Methods: We analyzed marital status in 430 epilepsy surgery patients and in a subset with temporal lobe epilepsy. Marital status was assessed in relation to gender and age of epilepsy onset and compared with marital rates for the U.S. population. Patients who had > or =4 years of postsurgical follow-up were examined for change in marital status after surgery. Those patients who changed marital status were then evaluated for change in employment.
Results: Marital rates were lower than expected in men. Men with onset of epilepsy by age 11 years were less likely to be married than men whose seizures began after age 11 or women whose seizures began at any age. Men and women with temporal lobe epilepsy had higher marriage rates than those with extratemporal lobe epilepsy. More than 4 years after epilepsy surgery (n = 190), patients who had no recurrent seizures were more likely to change marital status (28 of 124, 23%), than those who had recurrent seizures (five of 66, 8%). Seizure-free women were more likely to divorce (n = 9) than were seizure-free men (n = 1). Most men who married were employed (77%), whereas women who divorced were usually unemployed (67%).
Conclusions: The age at which seizures begin influences later marital status in men, who have reduced marriage rates. The abolition of seizures by epilepsy surgery creates new opportunities for changing social relationships. Location of the epileptic focus may influence psychosocial function.