The fastest-growing segment of epilepsy patients in the United States is over age 65, and their condition is potentially difficult to diagnose.
One reason is that seniors often don’t experience epilepsy symptoms until these later years, and they rarely have convulsions.
Instead, they have different, more understated symptoms, says epileptologist Andreas Alexopoulos, MD.
These symptoms include:
Confusion
Suspended awareness
Hearing or seeing things
Sporadic memory loss
“When older adults have a seizure, their symptoms may in fact be mistaken for dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease, depression or just normal aging,” Dr. Alexopoulos says.
