Abstracts

Rationale: It is well know the stigma and lack of information about epilepsy worldwide. This fact increases the impact of the diagnosis of epilepsy and is one of the strongest factors responsible for stigma in this field. Quality of life instruments are a good way to measure the perception of the families regarding epilepsy. Although quality of life in children with epilepsy has been regarded as an area of interest recently, new onset cases from community have been less studied, especially in underdeveloped countries. Methods: We used a Portuguese Version (Maia et al., Epilepsy & Behavior 2006;9:503–9) of Impact of Childhood Illness Scale (ICIS) to evaluate the quality of life in children with epilepsy from the community, in Butantã, a district of Sao Paulo city, Brazil. This general quality of life instrument evaluates 4 domains in health in childhood: physic, psychological, socio-familial and cognitive-educational aspects. The University Hospital of Sao Paulo University is a regionalized secondary health care facility and has a team of medical residents of Pediatrics and attending staff from the University of Sao Paulo. All patients were referred from the Emergency Room of the Pediatric Department to one pediatric neurologist and neurophysiologist; the children had new onset (less than 2 years) epilepsy, and were classified according to the ILAE Classification for Epilepsy (ILAE, 1989). All families signed an informed consent to take part in the study and answered the questionnaire during the outpatient evaluation. The patients were not medicated in the first episode, and if they had recurrence of seizures, they were orientated to come to the same unit, when AED treatment was discussed with the families.Results: There were 22 children (15 boys) with ages ranging from 7 to 14 yrs. (mean 8.9yrs). Eight children were diagnosed with benign epilepsy with centrotemporal spikes, 2 with benign occipital epilepsy, 4 with focal epilepsy with normal EEG, 5 with generalized idiopathic absence epilepsy, 2 with focal symptomatic epilepsy and in one no classification of epilepsy was possible. The mean general score for the 4 domains was 77.5%; specific domain mean scores were: physic 75.6%, psychological 73.8%, socio-familial 87.2% and cognitive-educational 76.3%. Focal epilepsy (symptomatic and idiopathic) scored worse in physic domain when compared to the generalized idiopathic absence group (74.5 and 82.5%, respectively).Conclusions: We obtained good quality of life scores in 22 children with new onset epilepsy from the community. When a close relationship with pediatricians, patients and families is achieved, good quality of life can be reached in new onset epilepsy, which may insert the person with epilepsy better in society as well as diminish the general stigma about epilepsy.