Quality of Life in Children with Epilepsy

Abstract

Objective The main aim of this study was to assess quality of life in children with epilepsy.

Materials and Methods A prospective observational study was conducted in Regional Early Intervention Centre of the Department of Pediatrics Tertiary Care Hospital in central India. This study included 120 children with epilepsy aged between 2 and 18 years. In this study, we assessed the quality of life in children with epilepsy with the help of Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory (PedsQL). We further analyzed the quality of life in various dimensions. For the statistical analyses for SPSS version, 20 was used, chi-squared and Fisher's exact test was used for categorical variables, and Student's t-test was used for quantitative variables. Linear regression analysis was done for multivariate analysis.

Result Mean total PedsQL score for total cohort was 70.96. The cognitive dimension of epileptic children was more affected than physical, social, and emotional dimensions. Factors associated with lower PedsQL scores in epilepsy patients were associated with long duration of epilepsy, polytherapy, male gender, low head circumference, presence of intellectual disability, and refractory epilepsy.

Conclusion Epilepsy affects the quality of life in children across all age groups. Among epilepsy indicators, polytherapy, refractory epilepsy, and duration of epilepsy were the most important factors associated with poor quality of life. We can conclude that every effort should be made to decrease the duration of treatment and minimize the number of drugs for improving the quality of life in this patient cohort.

Keywords

children - epilepsy - quality of life - antiepileptic drugs

Ethical Approval

This study received its ethical approval from the Institutional Ethics Committee of SS Medical College, under Project no. 24, in 2018.

Authors' Contribution

M.K.P. conceptualized and designed the scope of this study, and performed data collection. D.D. conceptualized and analyzed this study.

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