Parental education predicts change in intelligence quotient after childhood epilepsy surgery

Abstract

SUMMARYObjective: To know whether change in the intelligence quotient (IQ) of children who undergo epilepsy surgery is associated with the educational level of their parents. Methods: Retrospective analysis of data obtained from a cohort of children who underwent epilepsy surgery between January 1996 and September 2010. We performed simple and multiple regression analyses to identify predictors associated with IQ change after surgery. In addition to parental education, six variables previously demonstrated to be associated with IQ change after surgery were included as predictors: age at surgery, duration of epilepsy, etiology, presurgical IQ, reduction of antiepileptic drugs, and seizure freedom. We used delta IQ (IQ 2 years after surgery minus IQ shortly before surgery) as the primary outcome variable, but also performed analyses with pre-and postsurgical IQ as outcome variables to support our findings. To validate the results we performed simple regression analysis with parental education as the predictor in specific subgroups. Results: The sample for regression analysis included 118 children (60 male; median age at surgery 9.73 years). Parental education was significantly associated with delta IQ in simple regression analysis (p = 0.004), and also contributed significantly to postsurgical IQ in multiple regression analysis (p = 0.008). Additional analyses demonstrated that parental education made a unique contribution to prediction of delta IQ, that is, it could not be replaced by the illness-related variables. Subgroup analyses confirmed the association of parental education with IQ change after surgery for most groups. Significance: Children whose parents had higher education demonstrate on average a greater increase in IQ after surgery and a higher postsurgical-but not presurgical-IQ than children whose parents completed at most lower secondary education. Parental education-and perhaps other environmental variables-should be considered in the prognosis of cognitive function after childhood epilepsy surgery.

Cognitive functioning after epilepsy surgery in children with mild malformation of cortical development and focal cortical dysplasia

“…Although this association was significant, the effect was small. In the same study, there was no relation between parental education and presurgical IQ [16]. A large twin study in a healthy British population showed the effect of genetics on intelligence to be similar among low and high socioeconomic status families [42].…”

“…In general, postoperative cognitive outcome has been shown to correlate with seizure freedom [6,11,[13][14][15], parental education [16], antiepileptic drug (AED) policies [15,17], preoperative seizure frequency [5], and with etiology [17,18]. Importantly, earlier onset [5,9,[19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26] and longer duration [5,27] of epilepsy predict more severe cognitive impairment.…”

Reflection on Assessing the Development of Children after Epilepsy Surgery

“…Follow-up after surgery also varied widely, some studies reporting intervals of 4 to 11 years 19,20,22,23 or 0.9 to 15 years, 24 whereas others used fixed intervals of, for example, 2 years. [25][26][27][28] The major aim of most studies was to detect the impact, if any, of epilepsy-related variables on the cognitive outcome measures.…”

“…Presumably, parental level of education can impact outcome, as more educated parents may know better ways to enrich their children's environment. 16 According to Meekes et al 27 , parental education had a significant effect on postsurgical change in IQ, rather than on either pre-or postsurgical IQ per se. Puka et al 18 found no correlation with IQ; however, nor of other environmental variables, such as family income and residence location.…”

Correlação entre inteligência (Gf) e desempenho acadêmico em estudantes do 9º ano do ensino fundamental de uma instituição particular de ensino do interior do Estado de São Paulo

“…Um estudo pesquisou o impacto do nível acadêmico dos pais sobre o crescimento nas médias de QI de crianças que foram submetidas à cirurgia para epilepsia. Os resultados demonstraram que se apenas um dos pais atingiu o nível de mestrado, isso causa um impacto de oito pontos a mais no índice de QI do filho (Meekes, Schooneveld, Braams, Jennekens-Schinkel, Rijen, Hendriks, Braun, & Nieuwenhuizen, 2015).…”