Ann Epilepsy Seizure | Volume 1, Issue 1 | Editorial | Open Access
Domenico Chirchiglia
Department of Neurosurgery, University of Catanzaro, Italy
*Correspondance to: Domenico Chirchiglia
Fulltext PDFEpilepsy in the elderly is a very debated case because much depends on the causes and associated pathologies. In particular, in the presence of comorbidity it is often difficult to find an effective and safe antiepileptic therapy that does not interfere with other drugs and therefore must be personalized. New-onset epilepsy in the elderly is caused by two types of cerebral lesions: the first concerns progressive, evolutive lesions, on which one can intervene, such as tumors or cerebrovascular pathologies, often acute. The second includes stabilized, chronic, Not-Evolutive Epileptogenic Brain Lesions (NEEBLs), such as cortico-subcortical atrophy, gliosis, porencephaly, encephalomalacic cavities. They're all related to the results of cerebral insults. In these cases, antiepileptic therapy is the only remedy and often has to take into account associated pathologies, vascular or psychiatric. The literature offers little on NEEBLs, although some data reports a percentage of around 30% and this is a high and significant and underestimated finding, if one thinks that is added to cases of newonset epilepsy in the elderly caused by progressive lesions. Therefore there is to be expected in the future an increase in epilepsy in the elderly, due to the increase of the age of life.
Epilepsy; Gliosis; Cerebral atrophy; Elderly epilepsy; Brain insults
Chirchiglia D. Does Epilepsy Increase in the Elderly? Beware of Not Evolutive Epileptogenic Brain Lesions (NEEBLs). Ann Epilepsy Seizure. 2018; 1(1): 1004.