J Korean Child Neurol Soc.  2006 Nov;14(2):295-302.

Clinical Factors affecting Quality of Life in Children with Epilepsy

• Kim SE
• Suh HA
• Yum MS
• You SJ
• Kim DS
• Yoo HI
• Ko TS

Abstract

PURPOSE
Despite the worldwide interests in the quality of life issues in children with epilepsy, only few studies have been conducted in Korea yet. This study is aimed to analyze clinical factors related with the issues of life in children with epilepsy.
METHODS
A total of 158 children(79 patients/79 control) were involved in the study from the Department of Pediatrics at Asan Medical Center and 79 normal children who completed the Korean Child Behavior Checklist(K-CBCL). We used the Korean version of the Quality of Life in Childhood Epilepsy Questionnaire(K-QOLCE) to evaluate the quality of life. The differences of the quality of life between the patients and the controls were compared and the influencing factors were evaluated.
RESULTS
The scores of physical functions, well-being, cognition, social functions, behaviors, general health, and quality of life were lower in the patients than in the controls. We found higher scores of quality of life in the patients with epilepsy who were younger when diagnosed, had shorter disease period, took fewer drugs, and took drugs for a shorter time(P<0.05). Higher scores of physical restriction(P=0.017), self-esteem(P=0.006), cognition(P=0.02), and behaviors(P=0.019) were noted for the patients with partial seizures, compared to those with generalized seizures.
CONCLUSION
We found that the quality of life in the pediatric epilepsy patients was lower than that of normal children and various factors associated with the treatment of epilepsy influenced the quality of life. The information obtained from this study will help us offer better epilepsy management.

Keyword

Quality of life; Pediatric epilepsy

MeSH Terms

Child Behavior
Child*
Chungcheongnam-do
Cognition
Epilepsy*
Humans
Korea
Pediatrics
Quality of Life*
Seizures