When Dr. Loftus trained as a resident in the early 1990s, neurologists who treated adult patients typically had only three medications to choose from for seizure treatment. In those days, seizure control was the most important factor most physicians used to analyze the adequacy of a patient's seizure therapy.
Fortunately in the mid 1990s, G.A. Baker, Ph.D. and others began to look at quality of life scales in patients with epilepsy. This led to the development of the adverse event profile. In this scale, a score of 45 or greater was considered to be a sign of anti-epileptic drug toxicity. In 2004, F.G. Gilliam, M.D. was the lead author on a paper in the Journal of Neurology (62: 23-27) entitled "Systematic Screening Allows Reduction of Adverse Antiepileptic Drug Effects. A Randomized Trial" which demonstrated that the adverse event profile correlated well with the QOLIE-89 (quality of life instrument) scale. It was also shown that if the physician treating the patient was aware of the score of the scale, then there was a much greater chance that the scale (and therefore the patient's quality of life) would improve. For this reason, Dr. Loftus has incorporated this scale into his clinical practice.
We have placed this scale online for a few reasons:
- To allow our patients to have easy access to the scale prior to their visit so they do not have to come early to the office to fill it out.
- We also hope to encourage other physicians to utilize this scale in their practice as well by making it easily available to them and their patients.