Issues when treating epilepsy in the elderly
Abstract
Background: The incidence of epilepsy reaches its highest peak after the age of 65 years. Diagnosis and management of epilepsy in the elderly (people after 65 years) is becoming all more demanding with age. In the elderly, epilepsy is the third most commonly encountered neurological disorder after cerebrovascular disease and dementia. Ischemia is by far the most frequent etiology, followed by tumors, trauma and neurodegenerative diseases. Most seizures in elderly are partial in onset with or without secondary generalization and can be usually well controlled with appropriate antiepileptic therapy.
Conclusions: This review article focuses on issues when treating epilepsy in the elderly. The authors give advantages to the »newer« antiepileptic drugs over the »older« ones, since they are at least as effective as the »older« ones but have elementarily less side effects, almost no interactions with other drugs, and seem to be better tolerated.
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References
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