Abstract:
Background: Epilepsy results in multidimensional and long term effect on the patients and
society at all. Adherence to therapeutic medication is critical for epileptic patient so far, the
issue of adherence still considered as secondary treatment gap and the most important cause
of poorly controlled epilepsy in developing countries particularly in Ethiopia.
Objective: - To assess medication adherence and associated factors among epileptic patients
on follow up at Jimma town public hospitals, 2019.
Methods: -Institution based cross-sectional study was conducted from April 08 to May
20/2019. Data was collected usingStructured interviewer administered questionnaire and
data extraction checklist. Simple random sampling technique was used to select a total of 301
study participants. Data was entered to EPI data version 3.5.3 and exported to SPSS version
23 for analysis. Variables with p-value <0.25 on bivariate analysis were candidated for
multivariate analyses. Factors with p value < 0.05 on multivariate analyses were considered
as statistically significant.
Result. A total of 297 study participants were included in the study giving a response rate of
98.7%. Of study participants 151(50.8%) of them were adhere toAnti-epileptic
medication.Source of medication [AOR=0.404, 95% CI: 0.240-0.678, P- .001], felt stigma
[AOR=0.495, 95% CI: 0.298-0.822, P-.007], seizure frequency [AOR=0.220, 95% CI:
0.069-0.679, P- .010] and medication concern belief [AOR=1.652, 95%CI: 1.005-2.717, P-.048] were significantly associated with adherence to Anti-epileptic medication.
Conclusion and Recommendation: -This study found that half of the study participants were
adherence to anti-epileptic medication.Source of medication,felt stigma,seizure frequency
andmedication concern belief were factors contributed for low adherence. Therefore,
particular consideration should be given to these factors contributed for low adherence to
antiepileptic medications. Intervention strategies focused on educating the patients to better
understand of illness and importance of adherence to prescribed medications might be useful
in improving adherence to medications.
