Cognitive impairment predicts social disability in persons with epilepsy
Published Online: Aug 29, 2014
Page range: 89 - 97
Received: May 19, 2014
Accepted: Aug 20, 2014
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21307/joepi-2015-0016
Keywords
© 2014 Krzysztof A. Bujarski et al., published by Sciendo
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Introduction
Cognitive dysfunction is one of the main comorbidities of epilepsy which co-exists with seizures and contributes to the adverse impact of the disease on employment, education and interpersonal relationships. A fundamental question regarding cognitive dysfunction in epilepsy goes as follows: in comparison to seizures, what role does cognitive dysfunction play in causing social disability? The purpose of this review was to evaluate our understanding of the role cognitive impairment plays in social disability in persons with epilepsy (PWE). We systematically searched the medical literature and identified studies which assessed the impact of seizures and cognitive function on some aspect of social disability in PWE.
Results and Discussion
We identified 12 studies which adequately measured all variables in non-surgical cohorts, and 9 studies of cohorts following epilepsy surgery. We found evidence from non-surgical and from surgical series that cognitive variables strongly correlate with levels of social disability.
Conclusions
We conclude that efforts to better understand the origins of cognitive dysfunction in epilepsy and subsequently at developing treatment modalities will be needed in order to reduce the degree of social disability caused by the condition.