Impact of meningioma surgery on use of antiepileptic, antidepressant, and sedative drugs: A Swedish nationwide matched cohort study

Background Meningioma is the most common primary intracranial tumor and surgery is the main treatment modality. As death from lack of tumor control is rare, other outcome measures like anxiety, depression and post‐operative epilepsy are becoming increasingly relevant. In this nationwide registry‐based study we aimed to describe the use of antiepileptic drugs (AED), antidepressants and sedatives before and after surgical treatment of an intracranial meningioma compared to a control population, and to provide predictors for continued use of each drug‐group two years after surgery. Methods All adult patients with histopathologically verified intracranial meningiomas were identified in the Swedish Brain Tumor Registry and their data were linked to relevant national registries after assigning five matched controls to each patient. We analyzed the prescription patterns of antiepileptic drugs (AED), antidepressants and sedative drugs in the two years before and the two years following surgery. Results For the 2070 patients and 10312 controls identified the use of AED, antidepressants and sedatives was comparable two years before surgery. AED use at time of surgery was higher for patients than for controls (22.2% vs. 1.9%, p