Medication Adherence in Persons with Epilepsy: Common Reasons for Missing Doses
Abstract number :
1.226
Submission category :
4. Clinical Epilepsy / 4C. Clinical Treatments
Year :
2023
Submission ID :
311
Source :
www.aesnet.org
Presentation date :
12/2/2023 12:00:00 AM
Published date :
Authors :
Presenting Author: Hira Pervez, The University of Toledo – MD
Anum Riaz, MD – The University of Toledo; Bashar Saour, MD – The University of Toledo; Rabia Zubair, MD – The University of Toledo; Kanya Dayananth, Medical Student – The University of Toledo; Sidra Saleem, MD – The University of Toledo; Imran Ali, MD – The University of Toledo; Ajaz Sheikh, MD – The University of Toledo
Rationale:
Medication nonadherence in persons with epilepsy (PWE) can have several consequences including seizure recurrence, increased costs of health-care utilization, status epilepticus, and an increased risk of mortality. The aim of this study was to determine medication adherence in PWE by studying reasons that range from a simple patient’s will to limited availability of anti-seizure medications due to healthcare costs.
Methods: This was a cross sectional study that recruited 79 PWE presenting to a tertiary level epilepsy center. Patients were asked to fill in a questionnaire asking 10 questions regarding medication adherence. Patient demographics, details of disease, and treatment were also obtained.
Results:
Seventy nine PWE filled in the questionnaire. Sixty six percent of patients in the group were female and 34% male. Mean patient age was 45.5±15.4 years. Fifty percent of patients were diagnosed with focal and 38% with generalized epilepsy, while the type was unknown in 12% of the cohort. Thirty (38%) patients were on a single antiseizure medication, while 49 (62%) were taking two or more medications. Majority of the patients were compliant with their medication doses (Table 1.) However, variations were found in questions pertaining to "taking medication same time each day" and patients "don’t remember to take it." Surprisingly, medication costs were not found to be a common factor that affected medication adherence in our patient population.
Conclusions:
Our study indicates that a majority of PWE remain adherent with the prescribed anti-seizure medications. However, the major factors limiting adherence included patients not taking their medications around fixed times, or altogether forgetting to take their medications. Based on these results, we suggest counseling patients regarding utilizing resources (including digital) to remind them taking medications at specified times, to improve patient outcomes.
Funding: None
Clinical Epilepsy