[Quality of life in children with epilepsy: a review].

Health-related quality of life (HRQOL) is a multidimensional construct, without general agreement on the number of domains and the content of each domain. In children with epilepsy, the HRQOL evaluation includes both nonspecific aspects, such as behavioral, psychological and cognitive difficulties and the impact of a chronic pediatric illness on the child and its family and specific aspects, such as the perception of the severity of the seizures and of the undesirable effects of the antiepileptic treatments, as well as the social impact of a negative attitude toward epilepsy. The present article presents a review of the methods proposed for the assessment of HRQOL in children with epilepsy. Most methods rely on parental reports; however, there is an increasing effort to develop tools taking the child's point of view into account. HRQOL tools have often been used in clinical trials and, especially, to evaluate the surgical treatments of epilepsy. For the clinician, HRQOL tools may be a preliminary approach to the patient's problems to be interpreted in relation to the patient's medical, psychological, cognitive, social and familial context. In France, few large-scale studies on HRQOL in children with epilepsy have been conducted. We present the preliminary results of a French study based on parental reports.