Abstract
Efficacy measurement of epilepsy treatment is frequently overwhelmed by the multiple variables involved: interactions between antiepileptic drugs are sometimes inextricable (Gram et al., 1981); and seizure factors (pattern, severity and frequency)have different degrees of importance on patient status (neurological, psychiatric or psychological well—being) influencing epilepsy evolution. These variables are important not only for epilepsy prognosis but they also tend to operate whatever the stage of epilepsy (Shorvon, 1984). The lack of objective measures of data, the quantification of all intervening variables (from the seizures and from the patients), the side-effects of drugs, the patient—to—patient differences, the length of disease, the duration of study design and sample dimensions are supplementary difficulties in epilepsy assessment. How to manage such variables in order to establish stable and reproducible criteria to assess epilepsy evolution or how to measure the relevance of factors as indexes of the evolution of this clinical phenomena are questions to be addressed by a clinimetric approach (Feinstein, 1987). Introducing concepts of clinimetrics with parametrization of appropriate epilepsy indexes, seizure components were used to assess epilepsy evolution. Rating scales were developed in order to solve some difficulties in the assessment of antiepileptic drugs (AED) efficacy.
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© 1993 Springer Science+Business Media New York
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Martins da Silva, A., Lourenço, E., Nunes, J.M., Mendonça, D. (1993). Seizure Frequency as Treatment Effect Parameter. In: Meinardi, H., Cramer, J.A., Baker, G.A., da Silva, A.M. (eds) Quantitative Assessment in Epilepsy Care. NATO ASI Series, vol 255. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-2990-3_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-2990-3_4
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