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When I trained as a resident in the early 1990s, there were essentially 3 seizure medications adult neurologists would generally choose from to treat their seizure patients. In those days, seizure control was the end all, be all, in judging adequacy of seizure therapy.

Fortunately in the mid 1990s, G.A. Baker, Ph.D., among 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 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, I am incorporating this scale into my clinical practice.

I have placed this scale online for a few reasons:

First, I want to allow my patients to have easy access to the scale prior to their visit with me so they do not have to come early to the office to fill it out.

Second, so that my patients will help remind me to use the scale.

Third, to encourage other physicians to utilize this scale in their practice as well by making it easily available to them and their patients.

Proceed to the adverse event profile scale: