| Abstract [eng] |
Epilepsy is a brain disorder that causes epileptic seizures and other consequences related to the disease. It is one of the most common chronic neurological diseases. Due to its importance, the course of epilepsy during pregnancy attracts a lot of attention, since this disorder affects more than one organism. The latter reason, as well as the constantly emerging new information, more detailed studies or the development of new guidelines, are the reasons why this topic was chosen for a more detailed examination. The aim of this work is to examine changes in the course of epilepsy during pregnancy, therefore a small-scale study was conducted. The latter consists of two parts: a 34-question questionnaire, which was physically distributed to women who already had epilepsy before pregnancy, and a literature review, which used articles from various databases and publications, and the results of the questionnaire were compared with the results in scientific articles. The main results show that seizure frequency can fluctuate during pregnancy, but in this study, half of the women did not have changes in seizure frequency, 28.57% of women had a decrease in seizures, while the remaining women had an increase, which is generally consistent with the data found in the literature. The available results also confirm the data that if a woman did not have seizures before pregnancy, then there is a high probability that she will not have them during pregnancy. Changes in seizure duration during pregnancy were minimal and affected only one patient. Similar results were recorded when examining changes in seizure type, as two patients experienced a change in seizures, while the rest either did not have seizures or they remained the same. The most common antiepileptic drugs used by patients were lamotrigine and levetiracetam, which is consistent with the recommendations provided in the articles. In order to avoid drug-induced teratogenicity, the antiepileptic drugs considered the most teratogenic, topiramate and valproate, were changed before pregnancy or already during pregnancy. The latter changes, together with other measures and medications, allowed for the absence of any fetal complications. It was also surprising that none of the patients experienced adverse effects of antiepileptic drugs, although this is presented as a common phenomenon in the literature. The most common type of comorbidity also did not coincide with the data in scientific articles, as the study most often mentions ear, nose and throat diseases, and not neurological diseases or psychiatric disorders mentioned in the literature. Despite the physically distributed questionnaires and a very targeted group of patients, the scope of this study is not large, so this must be taken into account when analyzing the results and drawing larger conclusions from them. This study shows that, despite certain changes, epilepsy during pregnancy does not change in the majority of women and only causes significant changes or complications in a small proportion. |
