Role of primary care physicians in the care of epileptic patients

Objectives: To assess the utilization and efficiency of the primary health care (PHC) centres in the delivery of care to epileptic patients. Design: Sixty health centres were randomly selected to represent various socioeconomic classes and urban/rural population in Riyadh. The study was conducted during August 1993. A predesigned data form was used to ascertain socio-demographic characteristics of patients, clinical features, health centre profile and health care resources available to epileptic patients. PHC doctors completed these forms for all epileptic patients found in their health centre register which entered in PC computer for analysis. Results: At the end of the study, 131 epileptic patients were found in the health centre register which accounted for 0.05% (0.03% in urban and 0.1% in rural). The majority of patients 80.2% were 30 years old or below. Out of all patients 77.1% attended health centres for up to six times. At least one referral to hospital or admission were recorded in 53.4% and 20.6% of patients respectively. PHC doctors thought that 31.3% were not compliant. Family history of epilepsy was positive in 12.9% of patients. Conclusion: The number of epileptic patients registered as epileptic at health centres were too low. There is a need to design a policy for detection of cases, training of PHC doctors and cost effective mobilization of resources to PHC centres so to attract more epileptic patients to use the health centres.