Assessment of Health Related Quality of Life in Patients with Epilepsy

Background: Estimation of Quality of life is a useful outcome measure to know about epilepsy care from patient’s perspective. Assessing QOL of epileptic patients is important so as to manage the epilepsy and to implement some interventional programs in order to improve the quality of life of these patients. The study aims to find out the impact of epilepsy on quality of life of epileptic patients Material and method: This was a cross-sectional, questionnaire-based study, conducted from March to August 2019 for a period of 6 months, after approval from Institutional Ethics Committee. Data was analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 25. The quality of life in epilepsy (QOLIE-31) was used for collecting data on health-related QOL. Result: The study group consisted of 65 patients of whom 48 were males (73.84%) and 17 were females (26.15%). Their ages ranged from 19 to 60 years. (mean age: 35.65). Majority of the patients were in the age range of 30-41 (40%). 50.8% participants were from nuclear family and 49.2% were from joint family system. Most of the patients had lower class socioeconomic status (61.5%). As regard to the employment status, 38.4% of patients were full time employed, 13.8% were part time employed. 29.2% were unemployed and 9.23% were retired and 9.23% were students.  The medication analysis revealed that 30.6% of the participants were on monotherapy whereas 69.0% were on polytherapy. The mean total QOLIE-31 score was 39.12 (SD-5.00). Conclusion: Epileptic patients had poor QOL with low total QOLIE-31 score, unemployment, use of combination therapy and people belonging to lower class were associated with lower quality of life in individuals with epilepsy. Keywords: Health Related Quality of life, Epilepsy, Quality of Life in Epilepsy (QOLIE-31) questionnaire