Influence of Depressive Disorder on Epilepsy Patients Life Quality

Abstract

Introduction:

Interictal depression as a co-morbid disorder can be seen among more than 40% of patients with epilepsy. Sex, epilepsy duration, type of seizures as well as applied antiepileptic drugs can cause development of depression which influence patient's life quality.

Goal:

To test relation between depressive disorders and patients sex, duration of illness, type of epileptic fits, antiepileptic therapy and life quality.

Material and methods:

Prospectively, randomly selected, we tested 300 patients with epilepsy, with or without depressive affective disorder at the Outpatient Department for Epilepsies at the Clinical Center Sarajevo. All patients answered Beck and Hamilton depression scale.

Results:

Baseline is consisded of male patients which made 54 % with the average age of 37.7 years, as well as female patients at average age 32.83 years. Depressive disorder according to the results at the Beck scale was present in 34%, and according to the Hamilton scale in 38.9%. Duration of illnesses longer than 20 years had 56% women with the expressed depressive disorder, compared to the 42% men's with depression (p< 0.01). Partial complex seizures were more often among women (p< 0.05). Carbamazepin as monotherapy was applied for more than a half of the baseline, and combined with carbamazepin significantly more frequently among men's (p< 0.0001), while female patients had significantly more often Lamotrigil.

Conclusion:

Depressive disorder is significantly more frequent among women with partial complex seizures, earlier epilepsy onset, and significantly more often on Phenobarbital therapy. Presence of depression with epilepsy significantly reduced patient's life quality.