Objectives: There is a striking deficiency of research in Epilepsy Transition. The objective of this work is to describe patients from a pediatric tertiary center referred to our Epilepsy Transition Program and to compare them with patients referred from community to our Adult Epilepsy Clinic. Additionally, we identified the level of confidence among neurologists receiving these challenging patients.

Methods: A cohort of age-matched patients (18-25y) from our Adult Epilepsy Clinic was retrospectively studied. Patients from our Epilepsy Transition Program were compared with the group referred directly from community physicians.  As well, we used a survey to evaluate neurologists dealing with childhood-onset epilepsies.

Results: All factors analyzed indicate that our patients from Transition Clinic (n=170) were statistically significantly more disabled and required multidisciplinary care more often than the group referred from the community (n=132) (table1). Data from our survey applied to 115 neurologists indicate that adult neurologists do not feel well prepared to diagnose and treat childhood-onset epilepsy patients (table2).

Conclusions: Patients from a tertiary pediatric epilepsy center present special health care needs and require more resources and than young adults from community (table3). The model we have developed provides successful transition due to collaboration between pediatric and adult health care providers; adolescents and their families are involved and we usually identify the services they will need. Childhood-onset epilepsies should be part of training/certification of primary care neurologists, since we have demonstrated that they do not feel prepared to diagnose and treat this population emerging from pediatric centers.