The relationship between aura and postoperative outcomes of epilepsy surgery in patients with mesial temporal sclerosis

Background: We conducted a study to evaluate the relationship between aura types and postoperative outcomes in patients with mesial temporal sclerosis (MTS) to predict the prognosis of patients, accordingly. Materials and Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 99 patients with MTS-temporal lobe epilepsy were enrolled based on inclusion and exclusion criteria. The types of aura were evaluated, and the outcomes were categorized according to the Engel scale. Preoperative and postoperative results of patients were compared and analyzed with the Kruskal-Wallis test. Results: About 73.7% of patients had seizure-free after their surgeries. The most of patients (n = 81) were in Class I of Evaluating Engel criteria. About 36.3% had not experienced any aura before their seizures, and among those with aura, the most prevalent aura was abdominal aura in 29 patients (29.3%) followed by other types of aura and affective aura. Most of the patients in Class I, II, III, and IV of Engel scale had an abdominal aura, without aura, effective aura, and abdominal aura, respectively, but this difference was not statistically significant (P = 0.691). Conclusion: According to this study, the type of aura cannot predict postoperative outcomes in MTS patients. More studies are needed to evaluate this relation in better-planned studies with greater sample size.