4.5 Quality of life
The change which was observed in both groups during a relatively short
period of follow up may be due to actual deterioration or improvement of
certain QoL subscales like executive function or mood, as these effects
relatively can change in this short period of time. Education on its own
is not expected to significantly change the patients QoL, especially
that the education in our study was only done once and for 30 minutes,
multiple educational sessions over several time intervals may have a
more pronounced effect on QoL.
QoL was correlated with several study outcomes, this implies that the
utmost results of patient treatment are seen in his/her Qol.
Nevertheless, QoL also significantly correlated with different
demographic and clinical characteristics of patients, an inverse
relationship with age, siblings with epilepsy, and number of AEDs at
both baseline and follow-up, this means that when the child is olderm
when he/she has siblings with epilepsy, and when he/she is taking more
AEDs, the effect on his/her QoL is more prominent,
The results of our study are similar to those described by Fogg et
al . (2012) who found an improvement in patients’ QoL after providing a
pharmacist consultation session (26), while May et al. (2002)
found significant effect only on the mental component of QoL but no
significant difference on the physical component of QoL (23). This
further adds to the evidence of improving QoL in pediatric patients with
epilepsy after performing an educational session.
5 CONCLUSION
Pharmacist-led education about epilepsy and AEDs can potentially
increase the efficacy and safety of AEDs but this increase was not
significant from the control after an eight-week follow-up. Although the
baseline level of adherence in pediatric patients with epilepsy was
moderate and level of satisfaction in caregivers about AEDs was low but
they both significantly increased in intervention group after education
provided by the clinical pharmacist, and was significantly higher than
that of the control. Quality of life in pediatric patients with epilepsy
was compromised according to their caregivers’ opinion, but has been
shown to increase when pharmacist-led education is provided about their
disease and medications, so the clinical pharmacist plays a pivotal role
in the care of pediatric patients with epilepsy and thus should be
included in the healthcare team for these patients.