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

OBJECTIVE

This retrospective cohort study assessed dementia risk in epilepsy patients associated with the compliance to epileptic treatment visits.

METHODS

We used Taiwanese insurance claims data to establish an epilepsy cohort ( = 39,216) diagnosed in 2000-2015 and a matched control cohort without epilepsy ( = 156,864), evaluating the incident dementia by the end of 2016.

RESULTS

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.

CONCLUSIONS

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.