Abstracts

Patients with epilepsy have many reasons to seek care for their chronic illness. Patients may have goals for their healthcare that may contribute to institutional and therapeutic choices. We surveyed patients in our university epilepsy clinic to determine what they would list as their top three goals in seeking treatment. We asked 20 epilepsy patients at the University of North Carolina Epilepsy Clinic to spontaneously list their top three goals in seeking treatment and the most important reason for attending a university epilepsy clinic. Twenty epilepsy patients completed the survey and the mean age was 44.1 years, with 12 subjects being female. The subjects averaged taking 2 anti-epileptic medications (AEDs) and the majority of patients (55%) averaged a seizure frequency of having at least one seizure per month. We found the most common primary goal for seizure treatment was to be free of seizures (50%). Additionally, 15% of subjects had a primary goal of being off all anti-seizure medication and 35% had goals other than seizure freedom or discontinuing medication. We found that 70% of patients reported that they sought care in our clinic based on institutional or physician reputation, whereas only 10% received care based on physician referral. In our cohort study we found that most of our epilepsy patients are seeking to be free of seizures, and a significant group wish to be off all anti-seizure medications. However, approximately one-third of the patients did not list seizure freedom or discontinuing medications as their primary goal for treatment. These findings highlight the need for continued dialogue between physicians and patients regarding goals.