Evaluation of executive functions and attention in epilepsy patients with multimethod measurement techniques

Epilepsy, a neurological disease that is common in the community and can be encountered in all age groups; It also brings many negativities such as cognitive disorders, behavioral problems, mood changes and psychosocial problems. To be aware of these negativities and to follow them closely in order to prevent the functionality of patients in daily life from being affected by these factors; In addition, in order to cope with them, correct orientation of patients and rational treatment choices are required. In many studies in the literature, cognitive functions of epilepsy patients were evaluated with different neuropsychological tests and factors that could increase cognitive loss were emphasized. In this thesis, we aimed to evaluate the executive functions and attention of epilepsy patients with various neuropsychological tests. In this thesis study, which lasted for a total of 10 months, we included 30 epilepsy patients and 15 healthy controls of similar age, gender and education level. Similarities Test, Digit Span Test, Verbal Fluency Test, Stroop Test Çapa Version, Wisconsin Card Sorting Test and Istanbul 5 Cube Planning Tower Test were applied to evaluate the executive and attention functions of the participants. Considering the test results applied to the patient and control groups and the variables, all tests supported that epilepsy had a negative effect on executive functions and attention. When the epilepsy type, disease duration, frequency of seizures and the effect of antiepileptic treatment on cognitive functions were evaluated, no significant finding was found. When we evaluated the patients according to their educational status, we found a significant relationship only with the Phonemic Fluency Test, which is one of the neuropsychological tests. While the results of our thesis study support that epilepsy disease causes executive function and attention disorders, similar to the literature; Unlike many previous studies, no significant effect of seizure frequency, disease duration, and antiepileptic treatment on cognitive functions was observed.