摘要
Background Senile epilepsy and its comorbidities pose a tremendous burden on patients and the society.Thisstudy was aimed to investigate the clinical characteristics and comorbidities of senile epilepsy,as well as the impactof comorbidities on the prognosis of senile epilepsy.Methods Information of patients with senile epilepsy was retrospectively collected from three tertiary hospitalsin Southwest China between December 2014 and December 2022.A total of 154 patients met the inclusion criteriaand were divided into two groups based on the presence or absence of comorbidities.The prevalence,type,charac-teristics,and impacts of the comorbidities were investigated.The characteristics of patients with and without comor-bidities were also compared.Results Eighty-one percent of patients with senile epilepsy had at least one comorbidity,and 36%had three or morecomorbidities.Eighteen different types of comorbidities were identified.The most common comorbidities were neu-rological(61%),followed by cardiovascular(45%)and psychiatric(26%)comorbidities.More than one-third of patientshad bidirectional comorbidities,whereas more than half of the patients had additional causal comorbidities.Amongall types of comorbidities,neurological and psychiatric comorbidities were found to be associated with an increasedrisk of recurrent seizures.Compared to patients without bidirectional comorbidities,those with at least one bidirec-tional comorbidity had a lower rate of achieving seizure freedom.The higher the number of bidirectional comor-bidities,the lower the seizure-free rate.Survival analysis revealed that patients with neurological comorbidities hada higher risk of death.Conclusions This study revealed a high comorbidity rate and a low seizure-freedom rate among patients with senileepilepsy.In particular,neuropsychiatric comorbidities can increase the risk of seizures and affect the survival rateof patients with senile epilepsy.Therefore,preventing and managing these comorbidities may improve seizure out-comes and reduce mortality in this special population.
