Pitfalls and unmet needs of transition in epilepsy: Understanding the adult neurologist perspective

Abstract

Transition from the paediatric holistic approach to the adult more individual care of epilepsy is a process that carries a high level of complexity and involves many actors. It is a mandatory step so to provide a gold-standard quality of care in young people with epilepsy. Its failure is strongly associated with a poor epilepsy, cognitive, and behavioural outcome. Although the interest of the scientific community on transition has increased, in the clinical practice it is still considered a sensitive issue, in particular for adult neurologists. In this study we aimed at exploring pitfalls and unmet needs of transition from the adult neurologists' perspective. A short survey, aimed to adult neurologists, was designed to explore i) whether transition is considered a problematic issue for the adult neurologist, ii) how transition impact his/her clinical practice, iii) which are the major problems related to the process, and iv) how transition may be improved. The results of the survey showed that transition is felt as a complex process that needs a shared action plan between child and adult neurologists, possibly with multidisciplinary team meetings as well as a higher training on childhood epilepsies for the adult neurologist.

Keywords: Adult epilepsy care; Epilepsy comorbidities; Epilepsy management; Pediatric Epilepsies; Transition medicine.