Drowning Is an Important Cause of Death in People with Epilepsy

People with epilepsy can die from a number of causes. To determine the risk for death by drowning, investigators in the U.K. conducted a meta-analysis of data from 51 high-quality cohort studies of people with epilepsy. Population rates were derived from World Health Organization databases.

The 88 deaths by drowning reported in more than 200,000 person-years of follow-up in people with epilepsy represented 5% of all deaths in the cohort studies. Based on an expected rate of 4.7 deaths from drowning in the general population, the standardized mortality ratio for drowning in individuals with epilepsy was 18.7. The overall mortality rate for individuals with epilepsy was 8.07 per 1000 person-years. Drowning was the fifth most common cause of de…