Pnd53 Uncontrolled Epilepsy in a Medicaid Population

Abstract

Quality of life (QoL) is an important psychological dimension in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). The factor structure of the SF-36 in patients with PD was investigated to determine how this measure might best be used to assess QoL in this clinical population. METHODS: Confirmatory factor analyses were conducted on self-report SF-36 data from 339 individuals diagnosed with PD. Six structural models of the SF-36 were evaluated against data. RESULTS: The underlying factor structure of the SF-36 in PD was found to be inconsistent with the assumed measurement model of SF-36 but consistent with contemporary theoretical models of the instrument. CONCLUSIONS: The use of the SF-36 in individuals with PD can be recommended when eight subscales are used and reported. The use of the instrument as a two-subscale measure of physical health and mental health components, however, was not found.

Defining incident cases of epilepsy in administrative data

“…We used standard criteria for epilepsy case ascertainment consistent with previous studies using claims data (Thurman et al, 2011; Paradis et al, 2010; Manjunath et al, 2011). Individuals were identified as having epilepsy if they met all of the following criteria:…”