OBJECTIVES: To determine the frequency of epilepsy in a sample of elderly outpatients with dementia and to evaluate whether epilepsy was more associated with a specific dementia etiology. METHODOLOGY: Data from 135 patients with dementia were retrospectively analyzed in a Cognitive Neurology Outpatient Unit. We analyzed data from clinical evaluation, neurological examination, neuropsychological testing, laboratory and neuroimaging findings, and electroencephalogram, whenever available. Etiologies of dementia were defined according to specific diagnostic criteria. RESULTS: Epilepsy was present in 12% of the cases, being more frequent in mixed dementia (21.4%), followed by frontotemporal dementia (18.6%), vascular dementia (15.4%) and Alzheimer's disease (10.8%). However, the rates of epilepsy across the different dementia etiologies were not significantly different (p = 0.817). Overall, 87.5% of patients started the epilepsy during adulthood, and in 84.6% of these individuals, epilepsy started after the emergence of cognitive decline. The most common types of seizures were generalized tonic-clonic (43%) and complex partial (38%). CONCLUSION: Although epilepsy occurred rather commonly in this sample of patients with dementia, no significant difference was found among the distinct etiologies.
Epilepsy; dementia; elderly
