Abstract
The effectiveness of Structural Shared Care for patients with epilepsyin Nakhonratchasima ProvinceThis study aims to evaluate outcomes of treatment in terms of patient with seizure free and with regular follow-up between the conventional care and shared care with specialist's advice given to GP and letter reminder given to the patientsMaterial and Method: The study was conducted between June 1999 and September 2001. Two community hospitals were chosen: one for control and the other for intervention group. Before the beginning of the study, guideline of management for GP was created between GP and specialist. All patients with informed consent were treated and asked to fill data in the registration and follow-up form. All the data was sent to the investigator to register and audit the treatment only for intervention group. Advice (if any) would be sent to the GP and the patients would be received the letter reminder for the next coming schedule appointment. After one-year study, all data recorded in the forms and in the OPD card would be gathered for analysis with SPSS version 8. Some information not presented both in the forms and the OPD card would ask to the patients by letter. Results: The number of patients in control group and intervention group was 45 and 55, respectively. All each patient's characteristics between two groups was not different but patient's age, number of mentally retard patients and type of seizure (p-value < 0.05, 0.05 and 0.01, respectively). At the beginning of the study, patients with seizure free in the previous 3 month in control group were 46.7% (21 cases) and 56.4 % (31 cases) in intervention group. After the study, this figure has an increase to 72.7 in intervention group and 60% in control group. For follow-up analysis, the factors which might influence patient’s regular follow-up were not different between two groups including Univariate and Multivariate Analysis (Cox proportional hazards regression). There was no statistical difference in an average of the duration of follow-up (mean in control group = 9.61 months; in intervention group = 10.31 months) and in the proportion of patients with regular follow-up (64.4% in control and 67.3% in intervention) (p-value = 0.87 and 0.86, respectively). However, for survival analysis, no difference in proportion of patient with regular follow-up between two groups (p = 0.46, Log rank statistic). Limitation and suggestion: Too small samples and few interventions might be the reason for no difference between two groups. The system should be corrected as a whole.
