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Abstract
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In their article “Risk for injuries and accidents in epilepsy: a prospective population-based cohort study,” Mahler et al.1 examine how epilepsy and its associated medical conditions are related to accidental injury. For many years, it has been known that people with epilepsy have more accidental injuries than people who do not have seizures. It might be assumed that having seizures causes events. However, the link may not be as clear and simple as it sounds. For instance, what if the reason a person had seizures was because of a past stroke? In addition to causing seizures, the stroke may have left the person with weakness. If a fall (or accident) occurred, was it due to the weakness, or did the person fall during a seizure? What if the person fell because of dizziness? Dizziness can have many different causes, only one of which is seizures.
How was the study done?
Mahler et al. wanted to better understand the relationship between seizures and accidental injuries. Mahler et al. work in Stockholm, Sweden. In Sweden, there are several medical registries: Swedish law requires the collection of medical information on its residents, both children and adults. One of these is the Stockholm Incidence Registry of Epilepsy. It is a population-based registry that includes medical information on almost 1 million urban residents in the northern parts of Stockholm. The registry began in September 2000 and ended in August 2008.
Mahler et al. were able to carefully review these medical registries in order to identify people who were newly diagnosed with epilepsy. Using the same medical registry systems, they were able to identify people who also may have had a stroke, Alzheimer disease, brain tumors, and psychiatric illnesses, to name a few medical conditions. Information was also available about the person's age, sex, and education (whether he or she had completed primary school, secondary school, or had gone to university).
In order to study a group of people with epilepsy, a comparison group is needed. Using the same database, Mahler et al. identified an identical group of people without seizures. In fact, in order to be more accurate, they matched each person with seizures to 8 other people who were similar, but did not have seizures. In this way, they was able to identify 2,130 people with epilepsy. They matched them with 16,992 people without seizures...
Language: en |