Abstracts

Different etiologies in adult epileptic patients have been demonstrated between developing and undeveloping countries but this difference is not so clear among elderly patients. The purpose of the study is to show our experience in relation to etiologies and clinical characteristics in elderly epilepsy. We made a prospective clinical study of epileptic patients older than 60 years, all cases were inpatients in the Epilepsy Unit of the biggest Peruvian hospital between January 2002 to December 2004. Among 248 epileptic patients, 58 cases were older than 60 years and none of them had antecedents of seizures. It was possible to find a focal etiology in all patients. Stroke was the most frequent cause in 31 patients, followed by tumour in 13 causes. Most patients had generalized seizures and neurological focal findings. We don[apos]t report status epilepticus cases. As in developing countries, we found that stroke is the most frequent etiology in Peruvian epileptic elderly patients, and generalized seizures are the most common seizure type.