Quality of Life in Patients with Epilepsy: Study from a Northern Indian Teaching Hospital

Abstract

ABSTRACT Objectives Epilepsy is a significant public health problem in the world today. The social stigma and impact on quality of life (QOL) may pose a bigger challenge than the clinical severity. In India, there are not many studies using quality of life in epilepsy (QOLIE-31) questionnaire to study the QOL in epileptic patients. This study may be useful in planning the management of patients with epilepsy. So, our study was conducted to determine the level of health-related QOL (HRQOL) of patients with epilepsy in a teaching hospital. Materials and methods This was a cross-sectional, questionnaire-based study conducted in a teaching hospital from March to October 2015. The subjects included both male and female adults of at least 18 years of age with a diagnosis of epilepsy, which was present for minimum 1 year. The QOLIE-31 was used for collecting data on HRQOL. Results Totally, 70 patients with epilepsy were included in the study. The standard deviation (mean) total score of QOLIE-31 in our study was 60.46. There was a significant difference in the total score of QOLIE-31 within the monotherapy and polytherapy group as the total score of QOLIE-31 was better in monotherapy group as compared with polytherapy group. Conclusion The study revealed that patients who were on a single drug (monotherapy) had a much better QOL than the patients on more than one drug (polytherapy). How to cite this article Sureka RK, Yadav KS, Agrawal R, Nijhawan M. Quality of Life in Patients with Epilepsy: Study from a Northern Indian Teaching Hospital. J Mahatma Gandhi Univ Med Sci Tech 2017;2(1):10-13.