Quality of life and mood assessment in conservatively treated cavernous malformation‐related epilepsy

Abstract

Background:To estimate the quality of life, anxiety, depression, and illness perception in patients with medically treated cerebral cavernous malformation (CCM) and associated epilepsy. Methods: Nonsurgically treated patients with CCM-related epilepsy (CRE) were included. Demographic, radiographic, and clinical features were assessed. All participants received established questionnaires (short-form 36 health survey, SF-36; hospital anxiety and depression score, HADS-A/D; visual analogue scale score, VAS) assessing the functional and psychosocial burden of disease. To some extent, calculated values were compared with reference values from population-based studies. Test results were related to seizure control. Results: A total of 37 patients were included. Mean age was 45.8 ± 14.4 years, and K E Y W O R D S anxiety, cerebral cavernous malformation, depression, epilepsy, quality of life This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Patient-reported outcome measures in patients with familial cerebral cavernous malformations: results from the Treat_CCM trial

“…Interestingly, these data are in line with a previous finding by Herten et al, describing increased levels of depression (measured with another clinical PROM than ours) in a group of untreated patients with sporadic and familial CCM, although the percentage of depressed patients was comparable to the general German population ( 6 ). Other recent studies found no differences between CCM patients and the healthy population in depression levels ( 8 , 9 ). In our study, no significant changes over time in depression levels were found, although after 2 years of propranolol, patients tended to be less depressed than those in the standard care group.…”

“…Previous reports described increased anxiety in patients with CCM ( 6 , 8 , 9 ), a further element that suggests a neutral role of propranolol over clinical anxiety in Treat_CCM. A recent study found a significant effect of gender on anxiety levels, with the female population suffering the most.…”

“…The literature reports significantly decreased levels of QoL in CCM patients as compared to the normal population, with the former group showing decreased scores in both the domains of mental and physical functioning ( 8 , 9 ).…”

Cavernous malformation located medially and deeply in the brain may be prone to false lateralization in cavernous malformation-associated epilepsy

“…Since performing resection surgery within a year after seizure onset or at a younger age has been described to induce better seizure outcomes, early surgery has recently been suggested more frequently [ [2] , [3] , [4] , [5] ]. The perspective of preventing cerebral hemorrhage and a report that anti-seizure medication cannot prevent the psychosocial distress of CM-associated epilepsy may also support early surgery in CM [ 6 ].…”

Clinical characteristics and risk factors of cerebral cavernous malformation-related epilepsy

“…Health-related quality of life in patients with an untreated CCM is lower than that in the healthy population [12]. Moreover, CRE has a negative impact on quality of life and mood [15]. Understanding the clinical characteristics and exploring the risk factors of CRE can help with the early identification of populations at a high risk of developing CRE.…”