Abstracts

Epilepsy is the most common serious neurological condition in the world. It is a very important cause of mortality and disability in developing countries. Because epidemiological and clinical characteristics of epilepsy vary according to regional factors, it is imperative to know the peculiarities of epilepsy in South America. We used MEDLINE and LILACS (The Latin-American and Caribbean biomedical database) to search and identify community-based studies including information on epilepsy in South America. Community-based studies were included if data were collected through standardized questionnaires and if raw population numbers were available for data confirmation. Age adjustments were described as originally reported. Twenty-six papers provided information on the epidemiology of epilepsy. Community-based studies showed crude epilepsy prevalence rates ranging from 3.7 (in urban areas) to 33.0 (in rural areas) per 1000 and annually incidence rates from 11.3 to 19 per 1000. Colombia and Brazil are the countries with most of the epidemiological information. Information does not exist for Paraguay, Peru, Venezuela, and the Guyanas. Even though, epilepsy has been poorly studied in some areas of South America, and infectious diseases, especially parasitic diseases are most common in this region of the globe, available data suggest that the prevalence and incidence of epilepsy in some countries are not too dissimilar to the ones in developing countries.