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Erschienen in:
04.11.2022 | Übersichten
Epidemiology of epilepsy in old age – English Version
Erschienen in: Clinical Epileptology | Sonderheft 2/2022
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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.