Patient Compliance Instruction Using TDM. Noncompliance Problems in Children with Epilepsy and its Solution.

Noncompliance with drug therapy was suspected based on the results of therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) in two 3-and 4-year-old children with epilepsy. An analysis of the data for both children showed the serum concentration of the antiepileptic drugs estimated from individual parameters to deviate remarkably from those established based on population parameters, and that the difference between these values varied after each measurement.After a careful evaluation of patient compliance according to the results of TDM, it was revealed the dosage due to the fact that mother had not realized her inaccurate dosage while another mother admitted that she had reduced the dosage due to the fact that her child refused to take the drug. The time needed to correct the noncompliance after its discovery using TDM was 3 months in the case of inaccurate dosage, and 12 months in the case where the child had refused to take the drug, by means of compliance education and training given to the mothers once -a-month at the outpatient clinic.