Evaluation of patients with epilepsy: an outpatient clinic based study

In order to identify the demographic features, seizure types and epilepsies, we reviewed the files of 1379 patients admitted to the epilepsy outpatient clinic of Bakirköy State Hospital for Neurological and Psychiatric Diseases between 1991 and 1994. Of these, 160 patients' files contained inadequate information and 80 patients with nonepileptic events were excluded from the study. There were 523 female and 616 male patients ranging in age from 6 months to 87 years. Risk factors could be identified in 612 (54.3%) of patients. Some 62.1% of patients had partial and 34.8% had generalized seizures, whilst 71.0% were classified as partial and 11.9% as generalized epilepsies. Two per cent were classed as special syndromes and 15% as undetermined. In our series the unclassified cases represented 3.1% of the total. We discuss the results and compared them with other studies.