Quality of Life Assessment in Pediatric Epilepsy

Abstract

Objectives Quality of life (QOL) is an accepted health outcome measure in clinical practice. This study was performed to assess QOL in pediatric epilepsy patients and identify demographic and clinical factors influencing it. Materials and Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted in the outpatient pediatric department of Dhulikhel Hospital, a tertiary care teaching hospital in Nepal. Parents or caretakers of children receiving one or more antiepileptic drugs were interviewed using QOL childhood epilepsy questionnaire comprising 91 items with seven domains and 16 subscales. All the individual subscales of the questionnaire were found to be compromised with least score on QOL and general health item. Compromised social, physical, psychological, emotional, cognitive as well as behavioral domains were also identified. Results QOL was found to be more impaired in older children and in those from rural areas. They had significant linguistic impairment and lower level of self-esteem. Overall QOL was found to be compromised more in patients with generalized than with focal epilepsy. Seizure frequency and polytherapy were the most important factors influencing overall QOL. Conclusion Despite taking appropriate antiepileptic drugs, epilepsy was found to be detrimental to QOL of patients. Hence, QOL assessment should be an important part of epilepsy management protocol.