Compliance of Patients with Epilepsy to Treatment and Affecting Factors

Objectives: Ensuring patient compliance in the treatment of epilepsy is crucial for the treatment success. Therefore, this study was performed to evaluate the compliance of patients with epilepsy to therapy. Methods: A total of 325 patients diagnosed with epilepsy after admission to the polyclinic were included in the study. A questionnaire and the Morisky treatment compliance scale were used for data collection. Data were analyzed using the Pearson chi-square and Fisher's exact tests. Results: In this study, 58.2% of the patients were males, 28.5% were university graduates, 32.4% were unemployed, 40.6% were using single drugs, and 31.4% of them had disease duration of >10 years. It was determined that 82.5% of the patients went for regular checkups, and 59.7% of them had a seizure frequency of <1 seizure per month. Additionally, in terms of treatment compliance, 27.7% of the patients were high, 58.5% were moderate, and 13.8% were low. Furthermore, there was a significant difference in the level of compliance to treatment according to age, gender, education and income status, place of residence, occupation, number of drugs used, information about the drug, and the state of the drug being measured. Conclusion: It was determined that the majority of patients with epilepsy had a moderate treatment compliance and that there was a relationship between the level of treatment compliance and many parameters. In line with these results, it may be recommended to evaluate patients' compliance levels and factors affecting compliance at certain intervals and to especially support patients with low compliance levels.