Elderly people are at a higher risk of developing epilepsy. With a progressive increase in life expectancy, this is the fastest growing group of epilepsy patients. Their treatment is complicated by the presence of physiological changes related to aging, comorbidities, concomitant cognitive problems, complex drug interactions, and difficulties in the adherence to medication regimes. Seizures can be controlled in elderly people patients with low doses of a single epileptic seizure drug. Tolerability is an important factor in drug selection, as elderly people patients tend to be very sensitive to side effects. Enzyme-inducing anti-seizure drugs should gradually be left out of the therapeutic arsenal in favor of new anti-seizure drugs that have shown similar efficacy and better tolerability. Levetiracetam and lamotrigine are the most recommended anti-seizure drugs for elderly people with epi...

During the severe acute respiratory syndrome due to the COVID-19 pandemic, dementia has been identified as disproportionately common in elderly people than 65 years who develop a serious viral infection. Data from the International Consortium on Severe and Emerging Acute Respiratory Infections confirmed a high prevalence of dementia in elderly people hospitalized. Dementia is likely to be associated with a variety of comorbidities, in particular, frailty, which can further exacerbate the risk of serious infection. In addition, up to a third of patients with COVID-19 have demonstrated cerebral/neurological sequelae with direct (brain infection, vascular effects) and indirect (host immune response, treatment impact) effects. It is possible that the infection may accentuate any pre-existing neurodegenerative disease. Several studies have described cognitive decline, depressed mood, anxiety,...

Rasmussen’s encephalitis is an unusual clinical entity characterized by drug-resistant focal epilepsy, neurological deficit and progressive cerebral hemiatrophy. The diagnostic and therapeutic approach is complex, even more so in patients with Rasmussen’s encephalitis of late onset (in adolescence and adulthood) whose clinical picture could be atypical when compared with its occurrence in children. We report a series of three clinical cases of late-onset Rasmussen’s encephalitis confirmed by histopathology and immunohistochemistry evaluations and in which clinical improvement was achieved after surgical interventions. Literature reviews on the clinical evolution and therapeutic alternatives for this type of presentation are included.