Abstracts

Rationale: The impact of epilepsy can be appreciated only by understanding that it is a complex pervasive neurobehavioral condition and not simply a paroxysmal disorder of recurrent seizures. By taking patients’ experiences, preferences and values into account, health-related quality of life (HRQL) extends the scope of outcomes beyond the traditional one of ‘seizure control with minimal adverse effects’. Although researchers have begun to document HRQL in children and youth with epilepsy (CYWE), little is known about what factors explain HRQL variability on a cross-sectional basis. Our objective was to examine the potential contributions of biomedical and psychosocial factors to HRQL among CYWE by: using validated measures of HRQL and of factors that are hypothesized to play a role in the expression of HRQL and are amenable to change if found to be important. Methods: Exploratory cross-sectional study of 131 CYWE, ages 8-15 who completed self-reported condition–specific measure of HRQL, and validated scales of IQ, depression, anxiety, behaviour, social skills, autonomy, victimization, self-perception and social support. Parents completd a measure of parental stress. Data on seizure severity, epilepsy-duration, AEDs, and educational placement was also collected. We used SPSS v.12 for statistical analysis. Results: HRQL correlated at p <.001 with depression, behaviour, anxiety, social skills, autonomy, self perception, victimization, social support and parental stress. No significant correlation was found with seizure severity or duration. With regression analysis, we identified the major contributing factors for each of the subscales:(see table)Conclusions: Regression analysis identified social support, autonomy, conduct disorders and depression as the main factors underlying self-reported HRQL and its five domains among children with epilepsy. Surprisingly seizure severity does not correlate significantly with HRQL.