The economic cost of epilepsy: a review

Epilepsy is the most prevalent chronic neurologic condition. In developed countries, its incidence is 30-50 per 100,000 population per year and the prevalence is approximately 5-8 cases per 1,000 population. The rapid growth of health care expenditures has led to increased interest in economic evaluation of health care programs. We reviewed studies on the costs of epilepsy to assess the significance of their quantitative results, through a specific scheme of analysis. The main findings of our study are that a general consensus on cost of illness evaluation is still remote and many studies lack technical details, making difficult any useful comparison of results. New efforts should be realized to achieve a major degree of standardization in methodological processes.