Frequency and economic burden of psychogenic non-epileptic seizures in patients applying for disability benefits due to epilepsy.

Background: Psychogenic non-epileptic seizures (PNES) resemble epileptic seizures and are often misdiagnosed as epilepsy.

Objective: To investigate the frequency of PNES and to calculate the economic burden of the patients who admitted to video-electroencephalographicmonitoring (VEM) to obtain a diagnosis of epilepsy in order to apply for disability retirement.

Methods: The present retrospective study included 134 patients who required disability reports between 2013 and 2019 and had their definite diagnoses after VEM.