Epileptic Patients with More Clinic Visits Are More Likely to Be Diagnosed with Dementia-A Population-Based Retrospective Cohort Study.

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

This retrospective cohort study assessed dementia risk in epilepsy patients associated with the compliance to epileptic treatment visits. We used Taiwanese insurance claims data to establish an epilepsy cohort (N = 39,216) diagnosed in 2000-2015 and a matched control cohort without epilepsy (N = 156,864), evaluating the incident dementia by the end of 2016. The dementia incidence was 2.9-fold higher in the epilepsy cohort than in comparisons (4.68 vs. 1.59 per 1000 person-years). Only 9.3% of epilepsy patients were compliant to ≥80% of scheduled treatment visits, but they exhibited a 7.2-fold higher dementia incidence than those without treatment. The contrast was greater in younger patients than in the elderly (20-fold versus 5.5-fold). Dementia incidence increased with the frequency of neurological consultations, peaking in the first year after epilepsy diagnosis. Epileptic patients with more clinical visits for active treatment had a higher chance of dementia diagnosis, highlighting the importance of close neurological monitoring post-epilepsy diagnosis to address potential dementia complications.