This study was designed to describe patients' experience with surgical treatment of epilepsy in terms of whether it was useful or had negative effects and to assess associations between experienced utility (satisfaction), experienced negative effects (dissatisfaction), and selected objective outcome measures. An evaluation of patients' satisfaction and dissatisfaction was conducted retrospectively by questionnaires for all patients surgically treated for epilepsy in Norway between 1949 and 1988. One hundred sixteen patients (74.3%) replied. Overall, 75% of the surgically treated patients reported that treatment had been useful, and 20% reported that the treatment had negative effects. The experience of satisfaction with treatment was strongly associated with a favorable seizure outcome, more severe underlying disease, improvements in working ability, being in regular work or education postoperatively, and not having disability pensions postoperatively. The experience of dissatisfaction with treatment was significantly associated with neurologic deficit and decreased working ability. There was overall agreement between subjectively reported satisfaction with treatment and success measured objectively. The experiences of useful effects and negative effects of the operation could not be represented by a single-dimension scale. Seizure outcome played a more important role in terms of reported useful effects, and neurologic deficit played a more important role in reported negative effects. In both categories, effects on social, occupational, emotional, and behavioral aspects played an important role.