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Too Little, Too Late?

Jerome Engel Jr, MD, PhD

JAMA. 2008;300(21):2548-2550.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Epilepsy is one of the most common serious neurological conditions. According to a study by the World Health Organization, epilepsy accounts for 1% of the global burden of disease based on disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs), productive years lost due to disability or premature death.¹ This is equivalent to lung cancer in men and breast cancer in women. Among primary disorders of the brain, epilepsy ranks with depression and other affective disorders, Alzheimer disease and other dementias, and substance abuse. Of the world's population, 0.5% to 1.0% has active epilepsy, and pharmacotherapy is unsuccessful in controlling seizures in 20% to 40% of patients.² In the United States, 80% of the cost of epilepsy is attributable to patients with medically intractable seizures.³ Temporal lobe epilepsy is the most common cause of pharmacoresistant seizures⁴ and may constitute half or more of the patients in the United States with medically . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Author Affiliations: Departments of Neurology, Neurobiology, and Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, and the Brain Research Institute, David Geffen School of Medicine at University of California, Los Angeles.

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