Anti-epileptics & pregnancy search folder

Anti-epileptics & pregnancy search folder

The Anti-epileptics & pregnancy search folder is part of 012. Audit Ready
This folder contains two searches with their associated reports which can be used for monitoring and audit purposes.


The searches RWA-001 and RWA-002 are very similar in their criteria, differing only by the type of drug the patients are on. They identify women aged between 10 and 55 years who do not have codes on their record indicating a sterilisation or hysterectomy procedure. These criteria have been used to return female patients of childbearing age. The patients will either have a current medication course of valproate or topiramate OR they are no longer on the drug but their last issue was within the past 6 months.

The search has been designed with audit in mind so it only looks for patients within the age range at the time. This allows users to use a relative run date in the past and obtain data from a different 6 month period without pulling data which had not yet been added had the search been run on the intended date (ie: setting a relative run date of 01/04/2022 will look at the range 01/01/2022 - 31/03/2022, but no data added after 01/04/2022).

Users should look at the reports to review identified activity. The reports reveal the medication that the patient is on, the dates of recent issues, and the problem linked to the medication. There is an opportunity for a quality exercise in problem linking to ensure that the correct problem is shown as the reason for taking the medication.



A similar search and report exists in the CQC folder (CQC-300) which is geared towards checking that pregnancy prevention advice for women of childbearing age on valproate has been managed within the past 12 months.

A number of codes appear to be in use for recording that pregnancy prevention advice has been given. Check your local policy for which code is being used.
  1. Pregnancy advice for patients with epilepsy [526961000000105] - this is the official code used in EPILPA_COD that might be used by national management data extracts

  2. Pre-conception advice for patients with epilepsy [526941000000109]
  3. Contraceptive advice for patients with epilepsy [2014871000006103]
  4. Contraceptive advice for patients on valproate for epilepsy [2014871000006103] EMIS code


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