Evaluation of the quality of life in epileptic children of Shiraz, Southern Iran

People  suffer chronic disease like epilepsy are highly prone to debilitating changes in factors that affect the quality of life such as physical capacity, self-esteem, relationships with others and fulfillment of their daily life activities.  In this study, we decided to evaluate the quality of life in children with epilepsy in Shiraz, South Iran.

Epileptic patients  referred to epilepsy clinic of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences and had no first time episode of seizures in the previous 6 months and no febrile-seizure were included in the study. Patients were evaluated using the standard KIDSCREEN-27 questionnaire. Data were analyzed using the statistical software SPSS 21, Man Whitney and Chi-square tests and reported in terms of descriptive statistics. The  significance level was considered less than 0.05.

In this case-control study, 229 children with epilepsy were compared with a control group of 400 normal individuals. The mean age  was 12.44±3.16 and 12.10±2.69 years. The tonic-clonic seizure had the highest prevalence . Being a boy, older age and having more seizures per year were associated with lower quality of life; in general, epileptic children had significantly lower QOL compared to normal cases.

In general, epileptic children had an overall lower QOL while factors such as older age, male gender, and higher number of seizures over the years reduced the quality of life of these patients.