The most common somatic comorbidities among patients with epilepsy
Keywords:
Epilepsy, Comorbidity, Somatic diseasesAbstract
Introduction: Comorbidity refers to the coexistence of two or more diseases in the same person, which can affect each body system. The chronic course of epilepsy determines to a high percentage the presence of comorbid diseases. Almost every patient with epilepsy has at least one acute or chronic comorbid disease during their lifetime.
Purpose: The aim of the research is to determine the types of the most common somatic comorbidities among patients with epilepsy, their chronology of arising, as well as their distribution in terms of gender and age.
Methods: Our research is clinical, epidemiological, and retrospective for a period of ten years. It is based on the data from 1 624 hospitalized patients with epilepsy diagnosis and one or more comorbid diseases. The methods used are documentary analysis, clinical, laboratory, and statistical methods.
Results: Somatic comorbidity is observed among 946 (58,3%) of the examined patients. The most common comorbid diseases are: arterial hypertension (36,4%), chronic ischemic heart disease (10,3%), urolithiasis (6%), diabetes mellitus (5,4%), chronic pulmonary disease (4,9%).
Discussion: Our research shows a high percentage of diverse comorbidity among epilepsy and somatic diseases, which is in line with the findings from other epidemiological studies.
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Copyright (c) 2016 Irina Stefanova, R. Kuzmanova, P. Kolev
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
