Occupational status and clinical variables in adults with epilepsy

Epilepsy can compromise the lifestyle, quality of life, and functional status of patients. Objective: To relate working conditions and occupation with clinical variables in adult epilepsy patients. Methodology: Relate epilepsy variables to occupational status (employed vs. unemployed) and data from a specific questionnaire on working conditions with statistical tests appropriate to the situations, with a significance level of p<0.05. Results: A total of 80 patients were included, 39 females, with a mean age of 43.9 ± 13.4 years. Occupational status was employed in 48 (60%) cases and unemployed in 32 (40%) cases. A license to drive a car was observed in 31 (38.8%) cases. It was observed that 26 (32.5%) reported having lost their job because of epilepsy, 24 (30%) cases had already had accidents at work because of epilepsy, 38 (47.5%) cases reported that they were afraid of having a crisis in the workplace, 36 (45%) cases had difficulty in getting a job because of epilepsy and 32 (66.7%) employed patients reported that the employer knew about their health condition. There was a significant relationship between occupational status and clinical variables. In this series, it was observed that the use of various anti-seizure medications was related to job loss and the occurrence of occupational accidents due to epilepsy. Other findings were the association between seizure frequency and job loss, as well as structural epilepsy, which most often occurred in patients who could not find a job. Discussion: The unemployment situation, the rates of job loss, difficulty in getting a job, and the occurrence of accidents during a seizure in the workplace were high in patients with epilepsy. Lower schooling, higher frequency of seizures, and use of multiple anti-seizure medications were associated with impaired occupational outcomes in epilepsy. Clinical variables of epilepsy are related to work and employment.