Photo Credit: Artemis Diana

Many patients with epilepsy who require seizure-related ED care or hospital admission have poor medication adherence and less access to specialty neurology care, according to findings published in Seizure: European Journal of Epilepsy. Mohamed Taha, MD, and colleagues examined outpatient neurology visits 3, 6, and 12 months after seizure-related emergency care. Focal epilepsy was the most common epilepsy classification (41.7%). The study team found 107 (40.2%) of 266 emergency care encounters included follow-up within 6 months. The researchers noted poor medication adherence in 20.3% of all encounters. More than a quarter (28.2%) of emergency cases had input from the on-call neurology service, and antiseizure medications were adjusted in 60% of cases with such input. In the 12 months after the last ED visit, there were 14 deaths, 42.3% of which were associated with poor medication adherence.