Treatment of epilepsy in daily clinical practice: have outcomes improved over the past 10 years?

In the past decade, many new antiepileptic drugs have become available, but their influence on patient outcomes in daily practice is not well known. In a community-based study, we assessed changes in epilepsy treatment and outcomes over a 10-year period. We compared two cross-sectional community-based samples that were obtained from the same Dutch suburban region in 2000 and 2010 using pharmacy records for recruitment, including 344 and 248 epilepsy patients, respectively. The main outcome was self-reported quality of life (QoL, using the QOLIE-31). Potential predictors of QoL (adverse effects, seizure control, seizure acceptability, demographic, epilepsy- or treatment-related determinants) were assessed by multivariable linear regression. New antiepileptic drugs were used by 9 % of patients in 2000 and 34 % in 2010, P