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.