Patients with resistant focal epilepsy: what affects the quality of life?

Abstract

The aim is to assess the impact of resistant focal epilepsy on the quality of patients' life.Materials and methods. Prospective, comparative, observational study conducted under conditions of real clinical practice. Inclusion criteria: age over 18 years; the presence of two or more epileptic seizures in history; a long history of treatment-resistant focal epileptic seizures; current AED therapy. Exclusion criteria: history of non-epileptic seizures of any etiology; inability to perform an MRI and/or EEG. The design included two patient visits, the second 3-12 months after the first ("primary" and "repeated" examinations). The examination included the medical history, analysis of seizure diary, clinical and neurological examination, routine EEG and/or EEG video monitoring, brain MRI, and laboratory tests. During the initial and repeated visits, the patients were asked to answer the QOLIE-31, NHS3, HADS questionnaires. The patients were also asked to give their own subjective assessment of their physical and psychological state, treatment results, side effects, social situation, and the quality of life. All patients had a follow-up history of at least one year.Results. In total, 120 patients with current or past treatment-resistant epileptic seizures were examined (53 men and 67 women aged 18 to 77 years). At the time of the re-examination (under continuing AED therapy), seizures stopped in 50.8% of them. The number of seizure types decreased in 65.9% of people. The effect of resistant focal epilepsy on the patient's quality of life was determined.Conclusion. The use of commonly accepted tests (QOLIE-31, HADS, etc.) in the "expertise" mode is incorrect, probably because these tests had been originally created for the "client" situation. A discrepancy was found between an objective improvement in the clinical picture as a result of successful treatment and a subjective "insignificant" improvement in the quality of life as per patients' assessments.