JAMA Neurology-The higher the severity of epilepsy, the higher the patient's mortality and medical costs

Epilepsy status (SE) is a common, life-threatening disease, with an estimated annual incidence of 12 to 61 cases per 100,000 person-years

SE patients usually need to be treated with a variety of anti-epileptic drugs (ASD) in an intensive care unit (ICU) environment to stop seizures, resulting in high costs and possible related morbidity

Patients with super-refractory epilepsy (SRSE) still have persistent or recurring seizures after receiving at least 24 hours of infusion anesthesia, and usually require additional anesthetic drugs for treatment

However, due to inconsistent definitions and difficulty in identifying this patient group through specific diagnostic codes, a systematic understanding of the clinical burden and cost of population-based RSE and how these variables change as the disease worsens and lessens remains to be determined

They conducted a cross-sectional study of 43,988 hospitalized patients in the U.

Patients were classified according to the use of antiepileptic drugs given during hospitalization

Main clinical outcomes: including discharge treatment, length of stay, length of stay in intensive care unit, hospital-acquired diseases and expenses (total and daily expenses)

Of the 43,988 SE hospitalized patients, 22,851 (51.

The in-hospital mortality rate was 11.

The median length of hospital stay is 5 days (interquartile range [IQR], 2-10 days), and moderate (4 days; IQR, 2-8 days) and low (3 days; IQR, 2- Compared to refractory SE, high (8 days; IQR, 4-15 days) had a longer hospital stay (P <.

The cost of hospitalization for patients with highly refractory SE is also higher.

The practical significance of this study is that the discovery of epilepsy status obviously continues to be related to the huge burden on patients and the US health system, the mortality rate is high, and the cost increases with the increase in the refractory of the disease

Original source:

The practical significance of this study is that the discovery of epilepsy status obviously continues to be related to the huge burden on patients and the US health system, the mortality rate is high, and the cost increases with the increase in the refractory of the disease
.
Interventions to prevent epilepsy from progressing to a more difficult-to-treat state may have the potential to improve outcomes and reduce the costs associated with this neurological disorder
.

Original source:
Guterman EL, Betjemann JP, Aimetti A, Li JW, Wang Z, Yin D, Hulihan J, Lyons T, Miyasato G, Strzelczyk A.
Association Between Treatment Progression, Disease Refractoriness, and Burden of Illness Among Hospitalized Patients With Status Epilepticus .
JAMA Neurol.
2021 May 1;78(5):588-595.
doi: 10.
1001/jamaneurol.
2021.
0520.
PMID: 33818596; PMCID: PMC8022264.