Abstracts

Health quality of life evaluations have been used to improve our capacity to assess the impact of diseases to the individuals. Because quality of life evaluations might be greatly dependent on subjective aspects, tools designed to assess these aspects are interesting. Donoghue and collegues (Brain 1998; 121:317-43) have designed and validated a tool to evaluate the subjective handicap of epilepsy. However, it has been validated in patients from UK, but it is uncertain whether it could be successfully used in other populations with diverse culture and distinct subjective values., The Subjective Handicap of Epilepsy scale (SHE) was translated to Portuguese and back-translated to English. After test-retest, the SHE was administered to 219 adult patients (115 men and 104 women, mean age of 35.4 (18-66) years-old with focal symptomatic epilepsy, not submitted to epilepsy surgery. Patients were divided in 4 sub-groups according to seizure frequency. Data was analyzed by a Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA), using Wilks[apos] Lambda as the multivariate test and Student-Newman-Keuls as a [italic]post hoc[/italic] test for multiple comparisons between the six sub-scales scores of SHE. Results are expressed in mean SHE-scale scores (95% C.I.)., Multivarate analysis reveled a significant difference of SHE-sub-scales means among the four groups of seizure control (Wilks[apos] Lambda = 0.57;[italic]F[/italic]=579.23;[italic]p[/italic] [lt] 0.0001). The results of [italic]post-hoc[/italic] comparisons are presented in Table.[table1], Here, we validate the SHE scale to Brazilian Patients. SHE scores are similar in Brazilian patients when compared to England patients. Thus, we concluded that SHE is reliable and applicable to evaluate the long-term consequences of epilepsy in our population., (Supported by FAPESP.)