Introduction:

Neuropsychological symptoms are a major concern for patients with epilepsy and can highly influence the perception of quality of life. In the case of temporal lobe epilepsy, there are many variables that impact the cognitive performance of these people, among the most important are the etiology, the age of onset, the duration of the disease and the frequency of seizures, however, one of the most important variables is the lateralization of the seizure. It has been demonstrated that the cognitive symptoms of temporal lobe epilepsy vary depending on the affected cerebral hemisphere.

Contents of the review:

Temporal lobe epilepsy is one of the main focal epilepsies that is susceptible to surgical management, and the type of surgery also has great importance in the cognitive outcomes of these patients. In this article, we carry out a narrative review of the literature in order to describe the neuropsychological risk related not only to temporal lobe epilepsy per se, but also to surgical interventions performed in drug-resistant patients.

Conclusions:

It is important to know the concepts about the implications of cognitive impact in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy before making surgical decisions in refractory patients and to understand that the type of surgery also influences the cognitive performance of these patients. A balance must be sought between the freedom of seizures and the possible postoperative neuropsychological sequelae.

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