The increasing challenge of epilepsy in the elderly: shortening hospital admission

Sander and Abdulaziz discuss the increasing challenge of epilepsy in the elderly. Population aging is becoming a global phenomenon, although not necessarily a healthy one. Morbidity increases proportionally with age and many senior citizens have multimorbidity, often encompassing different health do...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Arquivos de neuro-psiquiatria 2020-11, Vol.78 (11), p.669-671
Main Authors: Abdulaziz, Ammar T., Sander, Josemir W.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aged
Aging
Convulsions & seizures
Diagnosis
Editorial
Epilepsy
Geriatrics
Hospitalization
Hospitals
Humans
Morbidity
Older people
Seizures
Tau protein
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Summary:Sander and Abdulaziz discuss the increasing challenge of epilepsy in the elderly. Population aging is becoming a global phenomenon, although not necessarily a healthy one. Morbidity increases proportionally with age and many senior citizens have multimorbidity, often encompassing different health domains. Epilepsy is a good example of a condition increasingly affecting this age group in terms of incidence and prevalence. Both have dramatically increased among the elderly, but incidence in particular now has the highest rates in people older than 75 years. A major drive for this upsurge is likely to be the increase in aging-related epileptogenic conditions such as vascular changes and tau pathologies. While formerly epilepsy was mainly in the realm of neuropediatrics, it is now becoming increasingly entrenched in the neurogeriatric domain, and this will become more evident in the future. An epilepsy diagnosis in the elderly may be challenging, as seizures are often unwitnessed, atypical, or have subtle presentations in the context of multimorbidity. So diagnosis is often delayed. Here, they highlight the report from Bacellar et al which addresses the clinical predictors of a long hospital admission in senior citizens with seizures.
ISSN:0004-282X
1678-4227
DOI:10.1590/0004-282X20200190