determination the proportion of refractory epilepsy and some associated factors in epileptic patients in the north east of iran

background: epilepsy is the second common neurologic disorder. although many antiepileptic drugs have been formulated to control the seizures, but not all seizures have been controlled by them. uncontrolled epilepsy can actually reduce the patients’ quality of life. objectives: identifying the proportion of adult intractable epilepsy among epileptic patients in an area in the north east of iran materials and methods: all epileptic patients who admitted to neurology clinic of a teaching hospital associated with islamic azad university of mashhad in 2014 that were eligible for inclusion criteria enrolled this cross-sectional study. after fulfilling the informed consent, interview, examination and eeg were done. the data was expressed and analyzed by using mean±standard deviation and the likelihood ratio chi-square test in spss software version 22. significance level was considered as less than 0.05%. results: from 171 patients, 59 patients with epilepsy (34.5%) met the criteria for intractable epilepsy (37.5% male, 31.3% female) with mean age of 28.2±8.5 years. the mean duration of disease was 14.5±8.4 and 11±8.8 years in patients with refractory epilepsy and controlled epilepsy respectively (t-test=2.5 and p=0.013). the seizure frequency was significantly higher in pharmacoresistant patients than pharmacoresponsive ones (7.15±8.4 vs. 0.29±7 per month p=0.0001). also taking carbamazepin and clobazam and primidone were associated with intractable epilepsy (p<0.05). conclusions: our results accounted that about one-third of patients with epilepsy are categorized in refractory epilepsy with higher duration of disease.