High precision in epileptic seizure self-reporting with an app diary

Area of Science:

• Neurology
• Digital Health
• Patient Monitoring

Background:

• Accurate seizure documentation is crucial for epilepsy treatment evaluation.
• Traditional paper seizure diaries often suffer from under- or inaccurate reporting by patients.
• Epilepsy health apps offer a potential improvement for seizure documentation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare the documentation performance of an app-based seizure diary versus a conventional paper seizure diary.
• To assess the precision and sensitivity of self-reported seizure data using different documentation methods.
• To evaluate the impact of digital tools on patient seizure reporting accuracy.

Main Methods:

• A comparative study conducted at two tertiary epilepsy centers.
• Patients with focal epilepsy were assigned to either an app diary or a paper diary for seizure reporting during their epilepsy monitoring unit stay.
• Performance was benchmarked against video-electroencephalography (EEG) annotations as the gold standard.

Main Results:

• The app-based diary group demonstrated higher precision (85.7%) compared to the paper diary group (66.9%).
• The paper diary group exhibited overreporting, leading to lower precision.
• Seizure detection sensitivity was comparable between the app and paper diary methods.

Conclusions:

• Seizure self-reporting accuracy is influenced by patient engagement with digital tools.
• App-based seizure diaries show greater precision in documentation for willing users.
• Findings have implications for treatment decisions and clinical trial design in epilepsy management.