Abstracts

Rationale: To discern if medication non-compliance, depression, negative beliefs about medicine, disability, and poor quality of life are associated with a specific patient population. If a specific population can be identified, targeted treatment or counseling could potentially be implemented. Methods: We conducted face-to-face survey-interviews of patients who were seen at the out-patient clinic of the Comprehensive Epilepsy Program at the University of Florida, Shands Jacksonville. The patients considered for inclusion must have an age greater than 17 and a history of at least two unprovoked seizures with a diagnosis of epilepsy. Patients that had non-epileptic spells, aphasia or cognitive impairment were exluded from the study. The principal investigator and research assistant reviewed each chart in detail and identified patients eligible for inclusion. Patients were asked to enroll in this study during the course of their regularly scheduled clinic visit. Informed consent was performed. This study was approved by the University of Florida institutional IRB. Individual patient information obtained included: age, gender, race, marital status, educational level, annual household income, work status, and driving status. Surveys administered included: the Neurological Institute Disorders Depression Inventory for Epilepsy (NIDDIE), Quality of Life in Epilepsy-10 inventory (QOLIE-10), Beliefs about Medicine Questionnaire (BMQ), Sheehan Disability Scale (SDS), Morisky Medication Adherence Questionnaire (MMAQ), and Wide Range Achievement Test-3 (WRAT3). All patient information and survey results were recorded, de-identified, and stored on a secure institutional server. Results: 77 patients were included in this study: 75% women and 31% African American. The median patient age was 41 with a median disease duration of 22.1 and a median age of onset of 18.5 years. 35 patients were disabled and 28 patients were driving. There were no significant differences between race (Table 1) or gender (Table 2) in the scores of the NIDDIE, QOLIE-10, BMQ, SDS, MMAQ, or WRAT3. Conclusions: Our study indicates that there are no differences in medication non-compliance, depression, beliefs about medicine, disability, and quality of life in our patients with respect to either race or gender. This suggests that each race and sex is equally impacted by epilepsy, thus no specific patient group was identified for targeted pre-emptive specific therapy. Thus, all patients with epilepsy, regardless of race or gender, need to be screened for major comorbidities commonly seen in epilepsy.