What do nurses and physicians think about the need for specific dietary restrictions in patients with epilepsy?

It is the responsibility of physicians and nurses to provide patients and their families with appropriate information. In the study described here, we attempted to identify nurses' and physicians' beliefs about and experience with the need for specific dietary restrictions in patients with epilepsy.

A cross-sectional study was carried out using a questionnaire in Shiraz, Iran, in 2004. All nurses from the pediatric and internal medicine wards of Nemazee and Dastghaib hospitals and also a random sample of general practitioners, pediatricians, and internists from around the city were included in the study.

The total number of participants was 250. Among the participants, 58.4% believed there existed a relationship between consumption of specific foods and occurrence of seizures. Personal experience with the occurrence of a seizure in a patient who consumed a specific food was reported by 28% of the participants. Dairy products, sour foods, food additives, meats and fish, and fruits and vegetables were the most common foods reported.

It is clear that health care professionals want to know if their epileptic patients require dietary restrictions and, hence, collect information from different and sometimes unreliable sources. It will be invaluable, in future studies, to take into consideration the experience of health care workers caring for epileptic patients in the evaluation of the relationship between consumption of specific foods and seizures.