Abstracts

Rationale: Epilepsy is a disease with significant psychosocial impact. Approximately 25% of patients with epilepsy experiment stigmatization about their disease (Bandstra NF, Camfield CS, Camfield PR. Stigma of epilepsy. Can J Neurol Sci. 2008 Sep;35(4):436-40) . Lack of knowledge in patients with epilepsy could become a factor associated with an access barriers to best epilepsy treatments. Methods: This is a cross-sectional study. We recruited 101 patients with focal epilepsy (defined according the criteria of the ILAE). Patients received a questionnaire to fill out while waiting for assessment. The 33-item questionnaire assessed: (1) knowledge of surgical options, (2) perceptions about the risks of surgery vs. ongoing seizures, (3) disease disability, (4) treatment goals, and (5) demographic and socioeconomic variables. The questionnaire was validated in a previous study in another Canadian centre (Hrazdil C, Roberts JI, Wiebe S, Sauro K, Vautour M, Hanson A, Murphy W, Pillay N, Federico P, Jetté N. Patient perceptions and barriers to epilepsy surgery: evaluation in a large health region. Epilepsy & Behavior 28 (2013) 52–65) . Clinic, electro-graphic and imaging parameters were collected from charts. The answers from patients who had epilepsy surgery were compared with those who did not have. Mean, standard deviation and intervals were used to describe numerical variables and frequencies and proportions for categorical variables. Analysis of Chi square and t-student were used to explore differences. P value was established at < 0.05 Results: Mean age of patients was 38.6+12.9 (17-75). 55% were males and the mean duration of epilepsy was 16.2 +13.0 years. 31 patients (30.7%) had previous epilepsy surgery. Mean time from epilepsy onset to epilepsy surgery was 16.1+12.1. The mean age of epilepsy onset was 23.65+16.94 in patients who haven't had epilepsy surgery and 15.90+11.85 for epilepsy surgery patients. The answers that were different between the two groups were as follows: knowledge about if brain surgery was an option to treat epilepsy (p 0.03), how dangerous is surgery (p 0.01), risk of serious side effects after epilepsy surgery (p 0.02), negative effects of epilepsy surgery such as paralysis (p 0.02) and stroke (p 0.003). Also, there were some different answers related to worries about need to travel for surgery (p 0.02) and costs (p 0.03) Conclusions: In general, patients who had epilepsy surgery had a lower negative perception of epilepsy surgery. Evidence related with a negative perceptions for epilepsy surgery has been poorly studied. Improving education about epilepsy treatments such as epilepsy surgery could contribute to diminish social stigma and increase awareness and potentially access to epilepsy surgery Funding: N/A