[Epileptic patient compliance with prescribed medical treatment]

Medically treated patients' non-compliance with the prescribed scheme is an exceptionally important issue, faced relatively often in medical treatment of epilepsy.

Different demographic and clinical data, collected upon questionnaire completion from 146 patients suffering from epilepsy, were sorted out and integrated in the present research analyses with the objective to determine the possible correlation of collected data and compliance level recorded in the observed patients.

Generally, the subjects took pretty the prescribed therapy regularly: in 62% of subjects the compliance level was recorded as good, in 23% as satisfactory, and in the remaining 15% as unsatisfactory. The following factors were identified as possible predictors of the less precise adherence to the prescribed therapeutic regimen (p<0.01): regular consumption of alcohol, medical treatment of 6 or more years, and three or more daily drug doses. The correlation between the greater number of prescribed anti-epileptic medicines and lower compliance level (p=0.05) was also assessed. The study revealed a tendency towards lower compliance level in patients aged below 30. Surprisingly, the same tendency was observed in the subjects with more thoroughly controlled epileptic condition. In spite of different experiments aimed to improve the regularity in taking the prescribed therapy, the issue of non-compliance still poses a considerable obstacle to the more successful treatment of epileptic patients.