Survey of Epilepsy in Iran

Background:Although,lots of epidemiological studies have been shown the prevalence of epilepsy in various regions, the importance of this disorder and its consequences point to the more necessity of sufficiently precise epidemiological data in the field of epilepsy. Regard to development of Iran, frequent car accident and war victims it seems that prevalence of epilepsy is high in country. Therefore, our aim is conduction of a huge national survey to assessing prevalence of epilepsy and related factors in Iran. Material and Methods:This is a cross-sectional nationwide epidemiological study that performed to estimate the lifetime prevalence and classification of epilepsy and their association with some factors in Iranian population. Overall, 100,000 subjects of Iranian residents selected by clustering randomized sampling method. In this regard, 30,000 families selected from 500 clusters by a door to door method. Results:In this study 68,038 individuals were enrolled from 19 provinces. The mean age of the enrolled individuals calculated 36.2±19.8. Frequency analysis showed that 50.4% (n=34,290) of them were male and 49.6% (n=33,745) were female.The prevalence rate of epilepsy estimated 17 per 1,000 individuals totally. The prevalence rate of epilepsy in males and females estimated 18 and 16 per 1,000 individuals, respectively.38% of total 3,947 individuals (n=1,500)diagnosed with generalized epilepsy. Conclusion:Iran has high prevalence of long life epilepsy that is about 2-3 times more than overall worldwide estimation. Partial seizure is the most common type of all types in our country. Spite of this high prevalence it seems considerable portion of patients are under control. According to our study, although in early life it is more common in males, epilepsy prevalence is equal in both genders.

Keywords:

Epilepsy , Seizure , Iran , Prevalence