Abstracts

Rationale: Depression is a common but underdiagnosed comorbidity in epilepsy and affects patients quality of life. The purpose of this study was to prove that the systematic use of a specific depression screening questionnaire in epileptic patients improves the evaluation and subsequently the treatment of this comorbidity in the outpatient neurology clinic.Methods: The Neurological Disorders Depression Inventory for Epilepsy (NDDI-E) is a 6 item-validated depression screening questionnaire in epileptic patients. A sample of epileptic patients of the neurological ambulatory clinic of H tel-Dieu de France hospital were interviewed by phone for assessment of their NDDI-E and had their chart reviewed for additional data collection.Results: From a sample of 44 patients, 27,3% screened positive for depression as by NDDI-E score. This proportion is higher than found in the general population. Only 58,3% of these patients were previously diagnosed with depression and only 50% were treated for it. There is no statistically significant correlation of the NDDI-E score with the following variables: sex, age, religion, occupation, living alone, seizure type, number of anti-epileptic drugs and number of seizures in the last six months. As for educational level , the study demonstrated that having a university degree would be a protective factor against depression (p-value: 0,005) in epileptic patients. Conclusions: Despite the fact that our patient sample was ascertained through epilepsy clinic at a tertiary care academic center and might not reflect community samples, depression was found in 27 % of our epileptic patients.This is higher than the cumulative depression rate in Lebanon of 19 %. As for educational level , the study demonstrated that having a university degree would be a protective factor against depression in epileptic patients. Use of NDDI-E is rapid, easy and reliable in clinical practice. It enhances depression screening in patients with epilepsy, and thus contributes to improve quality of life and management of depression in epileptic patients.