engleski

Depression and quality of life in patients with epilepsy – our experience

Introduction: Epilepsy is often associated with comorbid psychiatric illnesses and the most frequent of these is major depressive disorder, which affects around 40% of patients with epilepsy. Compared to general population epidemiological studies show a consistent increased prevalence of depression in epilepsy. Material and Methods: The prospective cross- sectional study was carried out at the tertiary teaching hospital (Zagreb University Hospital Centre, Croatia, Referral Centre of the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Croatia for Epilepsy) with prior Ethics committee approval. The main aim of this study was to evaluate the relationship between epilepsy, antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) and depression, and possible association between depressive symptoms in patients with epilepsy with the quality of life (QoL). Depressive symptoms were evaluated using Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HAM- D17) and QoL was assessed using Quality of life in epilepsy-31 inventory (QOLIE- 31). Statistical analysis was done using statistical software IBM Corp. Released 2011. IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, Version 20.0. Armonk, NY: IBM Corp. Results: The study included 108 patients (63% female, 37% male ; mean age 39.54 ± 15.91 years) with epilepsy ; 14.8% of patients had focal, 35.2% generalized and 40.7% both types of epilepsy. Majority of patients (65.74%) were on two and more AEDs and quarter were on monotherapy (25%). Regarding type of AEDs, 19% were on older, 42% on newer, and 39% were on both types of AEDs. Mean total score on HAM-D17 was 9.94 ± 8.18 (men - mean total score 10.16 ± 8.85, women - mean total score 9.81 ±7.84). There were no significant differences on HAM-D17 regarding gender and age. We didn’t find statistically significant differences regarding AEDs (older vs. newer AEDs, or both types of AEDs) and results on HAM-D17, nor between the type of epilepsy and results on HAM- D17. We found strong negative correlation between the higher QoL and HAM-D17 (p=0.000). Conclusion: Results of our study evaluating depressive symptoms in patients with epilepsy demonstrate that our group patients mainly experienced mild depressive symptoms, with no significant differences on HAM- D17 regarding gender and age. Patients with epilepsy with less pronounced depressive symptoms were found to have higher QoL. We did not find statistically significant differences regarding the type of epilepsy and results on HAM - D17, nor between the AEDs and results on HAM- D17.

depression ; quality of life ; epilepsy

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