Patient-Reported Outcomes (PROs) in Acute Symptomatic Seizure (ASyS) Versus Patients With Established Epilepsy

Acute symptomatic seizures (ASyS) are common in critically ill patients. It is unknown how ASyS affect posthospitalization self-reported health compared to patients with established epilepsy.

This is a retrospective cohort study from 2010 to 2018. Patients were identified by an institutional epilepsy database (Ebase). Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) were completed as part of standard of care and included the number of seizures in the prior 4 weeks, Liverpool Seizure Severity Scale (LSSS) ictal score, quality of life in epilepsy (QOLIE)-10, Patient Health Questionnaire-9 scales, and the PROM Information System Global Health (PROMIS-GH) scale. Mixed-effects models were created to adjust for age, sex, and race and to examine score trajectory over the 1 year after baseline.

A total of 15 311 established epilepsy patients and 317 patients with ASyS were identified. When compared to patients with epilepsy, patients with ASyS were older, mostly male, more often black, and had worse baseline scores on the QOLIE-10 (P < .001), PROMIS-GH Physical Health (P = .037), and LSSS Ictal (P = .006) scales. Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System Mental and Physical Health T-scores were worse than the general population (T-score = 50) for patients with both ASyS (44 and 42.5, respectively) and epilepsy (44.2 and 44.6, respectively). After adjusting for age, sex, and race, patients with ASyS reported 38% fewer seizures (P = .006) yet worse QOLIE-10 score (P = .034). We found that scores improved over time for all PROMs except for PROMIS-GH Mental Health.

Compared to patients with epilepsy, patients with ASyS had fewer seizures but worse epilepsy-specific quality of life. Independent of group status, scores generally improved over time.