Blog #142: DID YOU FIND YOUR ACCESS TO EPILEPSY CARE AFFECTED BY COVID?

 

 

Did the COVID-19 pandemic affect your ability to obtain adequate care for your epilepsy? The National Association of Epilepsy Centers (NAEC) noted significant impact by the pandemic.¹ Most evaluations and procedures in the United States for drug-resistant epilepsy, i.e., for persons whose epilepsy is not free of break-through seizures despite treatment, decreased in number.

 

Epilepsy centers saw pandemic-caused widespread changes in hospital practice. Access to specialty epilepsy care decreased in 2020 compared to 2019 with 21,515 fewer epilepsy monitoring unit admissions in 2020, a 23% decline. This resulted from restrictions on elective admissions, reduced staffing, and patient reluctance for elective admission.

 

Aggregate surgical treatment for epilepsy declined by 371 cases (5.7%) with the largest reduction for vagus nerve stimulation implantations (2622 and 2136 cases in 2019 and in 2020, respectively, a 19% decline). Temporal lobectomies (1465 and 1238 in 2019 and 2020, respectively, a 16% decline. All other procedure volumes increased: the number of corpus callosotomies (splitting the right and left cerebral hemispheres connections) increased from 2019 to 2020 by 35%.

 

All these studies had the limitation of self-reporting of administrative data which is subject to inaccuracies or bias.

 

1)     AM Ahrens, AP Ostendorf, FA Lado, et.al. Impact6 of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Epilepsy Center Practice in the United States. Neurology. 2022; 98 (19):e1893e1901

 

Lance Fogan, M.D. is Clinical Professor of Neurology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. His hard-hitting emotional family medical drama, “DINGS, is told from a mother’s point of view. “DINGS” is his first novel. Aside from acclamation on internet bookstore sites, U.S. Report of Books, and the Hollywood Book Review, DINGS has been advertised in a recent Publishers Weekly, New York Times Book Review and the Los Angeles Times Calendar section. DINGS teaches epilepsy and is now available in eBook, audiobook, and soft and hard cover editions.