A cross-sectional study of subjective complaints in patients with epilepsy who seem to be well-controlled with anti-epileptic drugs

Abstract

Patients who were considered to be well-controlled proved to report an unexpectedly high number of subjective complaints. Both medication and aspects of personality contributed to the level of complaints. Our study illustrates that subjective side-effects are easily overlooked in everyday clinical practice, possibly because in practice a generally phrased question is used to detect side-effects.

Subjectively Perceived Side-Effects of Anti-Epileptic Drugs in Chronic Refractory Epilepsy

“…The side effects of AED treatment questionnaire (SIDAED) [2], developed by our group, was used as the basis for the questionnaire. The original 10 side-effect categories of the SIDAED were compressed into four categories in order to focus on the most commonly reported side-effects.…”

“…Mood and behavioral complaints such as agitation or irritability and depression are reported less frequently (22%). Another study reported a prevalence of 67% of moderate to severe subjective complaints of patients who were considered to be wellcontrolled (defined as unchanged medication for the last six months) [2]. Cognitive complaints were reported most frequently.…”

“…Cognitive complaints were reported most frequently. Furthermore, patients on polytherapy reported more side-effects than patients on monotherapy [1][2][3].…”

“…In addition to the community-based studies from our group [1,2,21], we attempted to investigate the impact of subjective complaints in a hospital-based study, in patients with chronic refractory epilepsy. In the community based studies most patients were in remission or they had only infrequent seizures and most were on low dose monotherapy.…”

Epilepsia Benigna da Infância com Paroxismos Centrotemporais - delineamento do perfil executivo

“…Neste contexto, quanto maior o tempo livre de crises epilépticas, melhor será o desenvolvimento do córtex (Baglietto et al, 2001;Jeong et al, 2011;Metz-Lutz et al, 2011;Northcott et al, 2005;Piccirilli et al, 1988) e o desempenho de suas funções sem interferências, assim como o aprendizado de estratégias para aprimorar seu desempenho (Aldenkamp, Baker, & Meador, 2004;Hermann et al, 2010Hermann & Seidenberg, 1995;Hermann et al, 2006 (Uijl et al, 2006;Lagae, 2006). Ao diminuírem a excitabilidade neuronal e, consequentemente, as crises epilépticas, afetam os mecanismos excitatórios do neurônio e podem prejudicar a cognição (Meador, 2006).…”