Faculty Publications
Title
Childhood Epilepsy and Asthma: Comparison of Quality of Life
Document Type
Article
Keywords
Childhood, Childhood asthma, Epilepsy, Quality of life
Journal/Book/Conference Title
Epilepsia
Volume
35
Issue
3
First Page
608
Last Page
615
Abstract
Summary: We report results from the first data collection on an ongoing longitudinal study aimed at describing thenatural history of adaptation to childhood epilepsy andasthma in children and their families. We studied 136 children with epilepsy and 134 children with asthma aged 8–12 years. Data were collected from the children, theirmothers, and their school teachers through interviews, school records, and questionnaires. The two sampleswere compared on four domains of quality of life: physical, psychological, social, and school. Data were analyzed by a 2 × 2 between‐subjects multivariate analysis ofcovariance with type of illness (epilepsy or asthma) as theindependent variable and length of time since onset ofillness as a covariate. A significant main effect was notedfor illness [multivariate F (15, 236) = 11.36, p < 0.001].Our major finding was that children with epilepsy had arelatively more compromised quality of life in the psychological, social, and school domains. In contrast, children with asthma had a more compromised quality of lifein the physical domain. Our findings suggest that attention simply to seizure control in the clinical setting willnot address the full range of quality‐of‐life problems ofchildren with epilepsy. Copyright © 1994, Wiley Blackwell. All rights reserved
Original Publication Date
1-1-1994
DOI of published version
10.1111/j.1528-1157.1994.tb02481.x
Recommended Citation
Austin, Joan K.; Smith, M. Shelton; Risinger, Michael W.; and McNelis, Angela M., "Childhood Epilepsy and Asthma: Comparison of Quality of Life" (1994). Faculty Publications. 4372.
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/facpub/4372