Epidemiology of epilepsy in old age – English Version

Background Epilepsy is a common neurological disease affecting all ages. The increasing frequency of symptomatic epilepsies with age is partly due to cerebrovascular and neurodegenerative diseases. Better knowledge of the epidemiology of epilepsy in old age improves our understanding of the disease as well as the therapeutic and sociomedical challenges for the individual and society. Objective What do we currently know about the epidemiology of the epilepsies in old age and how should this be classified? Material and methods A MEDLINE search in PubMed was conducted using the terms “epilepsy”, “elderly” and “incidence” or “prevalence” or “epidemiology” and relevant publications were analyzed. Results The point prevalence of epilepsy of older age is 0.5–0.8% of the population and affects approximately 500,000 people in Germany. The highest age-adjusted prevalence is reported to lie beyond the age of 75 years. In recent decades, the prevalence climbed further among the 75-year-olds to be twice as high as among the adult working population. The incidence shows a significant increase among patients 65 years and older, reaches its maximum at around 80–85 years of age and is somewhat higher in men. Conclusion Reasons for the high incidence and prevalence of epilepsy in old age are the age-related incidence of potentially epilepsy-associated diseases combined with a longer long-term survival for these diseases due to better medical care and an increase in life expectancy. The change in the age pyramid with a higher (and in the coming decades further increasing) proportion of old people, will further increase the rise of epilepsy of older age..

Medienart:

E-Artikel

Erscheinungsjahr:

2022

Erschienen:

2022

Enthalten in:

Zur Gesamtaufnahme - volume:35

Enthalten in:

Zeitschrift für Epileptologie - 35(2022), Suppl 2 vom: 04. Nov., Seite 78-81

Sprache:

Englisch

Beteiligte Personen:

Lang, Johannes D. [VerfasserIn]
Hamer, Hajo M. [VerfasserIn]

Links:

Volltext [lizenzpflichtig]

Themen:

Aged
Elderly
Incidence
Prevalence
Seizures

Anmerkungen:

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Medizin Verlag GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2022

doi:

10.1007/s10309-022-00480-1

funding:

Förderinstitution / Projekttitel:

PPN (Katalog-ID):

OLC2133091351

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