Prevalence of Etiological Factors in Adult Patients With Epilepsy in Herzegovina

This study aims to assess the prevalence of etiological factors contributing to epilepsy in adult patients in Herzegovina.

The study included all patients with a diagnosis of epilepsy who were older than 18 years and were examined in the epilepsy outpatient clinic or hospitalized in the Department of Neurology, University Clinical Hospital Mostar, during the period from January 2023 to December 2023.

Of the 421 patients, 217 were women and 204 were men. Structural factors were the most frequent causes, with brain tumors being the most prevalent among them. Immune factors were the rarest causes of epilepsy. It was found that the biggest difference between women and men existed in the group of patients with brain trauma (p < 0.001) as the cause of epilepsy. A statistically significant difference in frequency was found when it came to structural epilepsies compared to other causes of epilepsy (p < 0.001). Within the group of structural factors, a statistically significant difference was observed in patients with brain tumors (p < 0.001) and stroke (p < 0.001). Men were slightly older than women, but there was no statistically significant difference. Focal epilepsy was the most common type of epilepsy (47.1% of men and 51.2% of women), and subjects with focal epilepsy were statistically significantly older than subjects with generalized epilepsy (p < 0.001).

This retrospective study provided the first insights into the prevalence of etiological factors in our region. Among the studied sample, structural factors were the most common cause of epilepsy, while immunological factors were the least common. Within the structural etiology category, tumors were the most frequent factor, whereas perinatal insults were the rarest.