Background: Epilepsy is a common disease with economic impact in form of frequent clinical visits, investigations and management. Objective: To estimate the direct and part of the indirect costs of epilepsy. Design and methods: The study was performed on a case series of medically treated Sudanese patients with epilepsy in a charity clinic. Data on clinical characteristics, utilization of medical services, and costs were collected from 38 patients using a standardized pre-tested format. The patients' approval was obtained as necessary. Results: Direct medical care costs was (2,395 Sudanese Pounds "SDG", 417 American Dollars "USD") per year per patient, of which antiepileptic drugs was the major component (1,587 SDG, 276 USD). Other costs are medical consultations and hospitalization charges (SDG 148, 26 USD), investigations cost (146 SDG, 25 USD), and cost of travel to clinics (514 SDG, 90 USD). Nonmedical direct cost -in form of traditional healers' visits were reported by 13.5% of the patients and estimated to be (1,422 SDG, 251 USD) per patient per year. The indirect cost was estimated for co-patients transportation, which is reported by patients who resides outside the state, making 7.9% of patients, and estimated to be (1,773 SDG, 308USD) per co-patient per year. The overall mean annual cost for epilepsy per patient in our clinic was approximately (2,724 SDG, 474 USD).
Conclusion:The economic burden on epilepsy patients is heavy, and the contributors to the cost in Sudan have many similar features and some noteworthy differences with that of other countries.
MethodsWe compared performance on the NINDS-CSN-VCIHS test battery between fifty-six people with VCI-ND and fifty control individuals. We used the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve to compare tests normally found in the NINDS-CSN-VCIHS with additional neuropsychological tests commonly used in China with respect to their ability to detect individuals with VCI-ND. The tests encompassed cognitive screening (MMSE), memory (AVLT), executive function/attention (STT, SCWT, RME, DOT-A, SDMT), language (ANT, BNT, FFT, ST, VFT) and visuospatial function (CFT). And then, we divided VCI-ND patients into two groups according to language impairment and observed their characteristics.
ResultsIndividuals with VCI-ND performed significantly worse than those in the control group in terms of language (P b .05). The language test with the largest predictive power with respect to VCI-ND (area under the curve) was the BNT language test (0.75). BNT was correlated with DOT-A (r = 0.28), RME (r = 0.48), STT (r = −0.39) and CFT (r = 0.49), P b .05. VCI-ND patients with language dysfunction were significantly lower than VCI-ND patients without language dysfunction in the scores of ANT and ST in language test and STT in executive test (P b .05).
ConclusionBNT test was suitable for language function detection in VCI-ND. VCI-ND patients with language dysfunction was worse than VCI-ND patients without language dysfunction in executive functions.
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