EPILEPSY: A Senior Moment…or Something More?
That vague, spaced-out feeling many older people experience may not be a harmless sign of aging. It could be an epileptic seizure.
These “complex partial seizures” are different from common “senior moments” of forgetfulness. And, because they’re much less dramatic than the convulsions most people associate with epilepsy, they’re easy to miss. On the other hand, they can be recognized, if you know the signs.
“People blank out for a moment or two, but there may be lip-smacking or (they) could be picking at things with their hands,” says Edward B. Bromfield, MD, chief of the division of epilepsy at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and an assistant professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School.
Seniors make up the largest segment of the 200,000 new cases of epilepsy diagnosed each year in the United States, and according to the Epilepsy Foundation, about 570,000 people older than 65 have the condition.
Epilepsy can greatly interfere with everyday life, and, if ignored, these minor seizures can escalate into major convulsions, so accurate and early diagnosis is important. But complex partial seizures are easily treatable. Three out of four affected seniors respond to drugs that don’t interfere with their other medications, Dr. Bromfield notes.
However, some seizures affecting people of all ages are not caused by epilepsy. They may have a psychological basis, such as emotional trauma. Treating such non-epileptic seizures as if they were based in epilepsy is dangerous and can prove fatal, so knowing the difference is vital.
The differences between epileptic and psychogenic seizures were explored in a trio studies published in the June 2006 issue of Neurology. The best way to distinguish them is with a video electroencephalogram (vEEG), which measures electrical activity in the brain, explains W. Curt LaFrance Jr., MD, director of neuropsychiatry at Rhode Island Hospital and assistant professor of psychiatry and neurology at Brown Medical School.
For more information about epilepsy among the elderly, visit the Epilepsy Foundation website at www.epilepsyfoundation.org/answerplace/Life/elderly/.