Material and Method: Refractory epileptic patients enrolled in the Epilepsy unit, King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital between 2007 and 2008. They were categorized by their history of epilepsy surgery into two groups. Sixty patients who had undergone epilepsy surgery for at least one year and another 60 patients who had no previous history of surgery, were recruited 60 cases each group from the registered list. Demographic data, illness history, psychosocial information, depressive state (Hamilton depressive rating scale, Thai-version), and quality of life (WHOQOL-BREF-26 Thai-version) were comparatively analyzed. The association between QOL and other factors was determined by t-test or one way ANOVA. Stepwise multiple regression also was performed to identify the predictive factor(s) for QoL.

Results: The outcome indicated that patients who had received surgery had significantly higher QoL scores than those without surgery in overall and specific domains including physical, psychological, social participating, and environmental domains. The mean QoL score in surgery group was also allocated in the level of good QoL, compared to Thai general population. There were six factors found that associated with QOL by univariate analysis. They were undertaken surgery, older age, seizure freedom, duration of illness, good relationship with family, and mild/absence of depression. However, the multivariate analysis shows that only surgery was predicative to improve QoL.

Conclusion: QoL of Thai intractable epileptic patients with surgery was much better than those without surgery in four main areas, which are physical, psychological, social, and environmental domains.

Keywords: Epilepsy, Surgery, Quality of life, Thai, Developing country