Patient-centered outcomes in older adults with epilepsy

Older adults have the highest incidence of new-onset epilepsy, yet there is a lack of self-management interventions to ensure that this population achieves desirable outcomes. In order to develop patient-centered interventions for older adults with epilepsy, self-management outcomes of importance to these patients must first be explored. The purpose of this study was to describe what outcomes older adults diagnosed with epilepsy late in life hope to achieve in self-managing their condition.

Qualitative description was used. 20 older adults took part in semi-structured interviews. Data were analyzed using conventional content analysis.

Six themes emerged - Maintaining Normalcy, We Want to be Involved, Well-Equipped, Seizure Freedom, Fitting Epilepsy in with Other Conditions, Incongruence with Provider Goals.

These results add to the extant literature, and provide knowledge on which patient-centered epilepsy self-management interventions can be developed. In addition, these results can inform the development of a patient-centered outcome measure for older adults with epilepsy. Such a measure could be used in conjunction with existing measures related to disease status (seizure frequency, etc.) to ensure that outcomes pertinent to both patients and providers are targeted and measured.