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Although
the outlook for most patients with epilepsy is good, it
is now recognised that patients of all ages with epilepsy
have an elevated standardized mortality rate of about two
to three times that of the general population. In 1998,
national mortality statistics recorded 963 epilepsy
deaths in the UK. Some of these are due to accidents,
drowning or to status epilepticus. A large number,
estimated at 500 annually, do not have a clear cause. "771 epilepsy related deaths
were recorded in the UK in 1995 more then twice the
number of sudden infant deaths and about half that of
asthma related deaths. Yet it is only recently that
mortality from epilepsy, as opposed to that from any
underlying disease, has again been acknowledged" (Nashef
& Brown 1996)
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