Abstracts

Rationale: The ketogenic diet has been proven to be an effective method in treating pharmacologically intractable epilepsy. This study, aims to assess ketogenic diet efficacy, and quality of life improvement according to family s report and its relationship to the ketogenic diet ratio. Having such data will help address the need to adjust ketogenic diet ratio in patients who continue to have seizures, and it will also help setting a ratio goal for patients with intractable epilepsy.Methods: We conducted a retrospective chart review of all patients who received ketogenic diet therapy, followed from April of 2005 through May 2011 in the pediatric neurology program at Children s Mercy Hospital (N=101) with an age ranging between 4 months, and 17 years old at the time of diet initiation. Ketogenic diet ratio ranged between 1:1 to 4:1 fat, and protein to carbohydrate ratio, using ketocal formula in 39 patients, RCF formula in 15 patients, and oral ketogenic menu diet in 42 patients. 4 patients were excluded due to incomplete medical records. Of these patients, 34 had generalized epilepsy, 8 had infantile spasms, and 38had focal epilepsy, with 16 having overlapping seizure types. Seizure control and quality of life (QOL) improvement was assessed at 6 months after starting the diet as reported by families during follow up clinic visits, and phone interviews.Results: 101 patients were on ketogenic diet. Data from 80 patients charts were analyzed for this study. Patients were divided according to their diet ratio where 12 patients were on 1:1 ratio, 25 on 3:1 ratio, 23 on 3.5:1 ratio, and 20 on 4:1 ratio. The seizure control and quality of life improvement are outlined in table 1Conclusions: In our study we found no significant difference in ketogenic diet efficacy among various groups of patients receiving different diet ratios. However there is some improvement in quality of life reported by families with ratios 3.5:1 and higher.