Abstracts

Impact of Pediatric-onset Epilepsy on Quality of Life During Adulthood

Abstract number : 2.304
Submission category : 11. Behavior/Neuropsychology/Language / 11A. Adult
Year : 2022
Submission ID : 2204683
Source : www.aesnet.org
Presentation date : 12/4/2022 12:00:00 PM
Published date : Nov 22, 2022, 05:26 AM

Authors :
Luca Farrugia, MD – Phoenix Children's Hospital; Kirstin Kirlin, Ph.D. – Neuropsychology – Mayo Clinic Arizona; Kellie Kruger, M.D. – Community Internal Medicine – Mayo Clinic Arizona; Nicole Schuren, M.S.W., L.M.S.W. – Social Work – Mayo Clinic Arizona; Amy Crepeau, M.D. – Neurology – Mayo Clinic Arizona; Kathrine Noe, M.D., Ph.D. – Neurology – Mayo Clinic Arizona; Dona Locke, Ph.D. – Neuropsychology – Mayo Clinic Arizona; Matthew Hoerth, MD – Neurology – Mayo Clinic Arizona

Rationale: Epilepsy is one of the most common pediatric neurologic diseases, yet relatively little research has focused on its impact on quality of life when diagnosed in childhood and patients’ transition to adulthood. Patients with epilepsy transitioning from their pediatric neurologist to their adult physician provide distinct challenges to their new physicians when compared to their adult-onset patients. An important step to ease this transition is to identify the unique struggles this population faces. 

Methods: A retrospective review of the Mayo Clinic Arizona epilepsy monitoring unit database who underwent neuropsychological testing from 2008 to 2019 was conducted. Patients who did not have an epilepsy diagnosis were excluded, leaving 637. Of these confirmed epilepsy patients, 108 of completed neuropsychological evaluation between the ages of 18-26 and had seizures onset before age 26. These were compared to 239 patients identified that had testing at ages greater than 26 and had first seizure at greater than 26 years old. A standard part of the neuropsychological evaluation is the Quality of Life in Epilepsy Inventory QOLIE-31, which is a self-report rating measure of emotional wellbeing, social function, energy, fatigue, cognitive function, seizure worry, medication effect, and overall quality of life. The T-scores from the QOLIE-31 were compared between these two groups, “pediatric onset” vs “adult onset.”

Results: Average age of disease onset for the pediatric group is 13.7 years-old and 48.5 years-old for adult onset. The pediatric onset group is 47.6% male and the adult-onset group is 53.4% male. Two metrics from the QOLIE-31 test were identified to be significantly different (p< 0.05) between the pediatric onset and adult-onset groups: cognitive function (48.94 vs 45.26, p=0.006) and medication effect (47.87 vs 44.29, p=0.003). The overall quality of life scores were not significantly different between pediatric and adult onset groups with T-scores of 44.8 and 42.8 respectively (p=0.135).  
Behavior