We aimed to investigate the impact of an educational intervention in improving responsive neurostimulation (RNS) efficacy by motivating patients to undertake regular RNS scans (downloads), allowing for prompt intervention.

As part of the management of refractory epilepsy with RNS, the recorded data should be regularly retrieved and uploaded to Neuropace for the epileptologist to analyze and make required modifications.

Twelve patients with refractory epilepsy undergoing treatment with RNS at our center from January 2021 until May 2022 were included. All patients received an in-person educational session and four weekly reminder emails about data transfer. Data collected included the number of RNS scans 6-months before and 6-months after the session, age, gender, education, intelligence quotient (IQ) scores, verbal comprehension and working memory scores, seizure onset, epilepsy duration, seizure reduction 6-months post-education.

Total number of downloads 6 months pre and post education were 455 and 411 respectively. An improvement in adherence with downloading data was observed in patients with temporal onset (195 pre, 223 post), 10–15-year duration of epilepsy (9 pre, 39 post) and IQ 80-89 (16 pre, 56 post).  Post education scans declined in patients with extremely low to low average working memory (368 pre, 307 post), extra-temporal epilepsy (260 pre, 188 post), seizure duration >15 years (244 pre, 195 post) and IQ 70-79 (228 pre, 166 post). Even though 67% of the patients reported >50% seizure reduction 6 months post education, these patients had fewer scans compared to their pre-education numbers (244 pre, 195 post).