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0:00
My name is Dr. Gregory Cascino.
I'm the Professor of
Neuroscience at the Mayo
Clinic College of Medicine.
I'm Chair of the
Division of Epilepsy
at Mayo Clinic in
Rochester, Minnesota.
My remarks will be restricted
to the evaluation and treatment
of patients with drug
resistant focal epilepsy
who may be candidates
for epilepsy surgery.
0:22
Epilepsy is one of the most common
chronic neurologic disorders.
The present definition
includes patients
with recurrent and
unprovoked seizures.
These often include patients with
two or more seizure episodes.
However, recent reevaluation of
the classification of patients
with seizures indicates even those
with a single seizure who have
significant risk
factor for recurrence
are considered to have
epilepsy or a seizure disorder.
In the community, the prevalence of
epilepsy may be as high as 3% to 4%
and the fastest growing group are
those of 80 years of age or older.
The incidents in the United States
is 180,000 patients per year.
The peaks for the development of
epilepsy are very early in life
and later in life.
The cost of epilepsy in the United
States is 12.5 billion US dollars,
and most of this is indirect
costs, such as unemployment,
underemployment,
need for a caregiver,
unable to live independently.
1:26
We know that epilepsy
has been well described,
and it's probably one
of the most frequently
identified diseases
in historic medicine.
"The Falling Sickness"
is a beautiful treaties
on the history of
epilepsy from the Greeks
to the beginning of
modern neurology.
