How long does someone with autism and epilepsy usually live for?

Answer 1

Autism is not a life threatening (or life-limiting) condition, and therefore has no impact upon a person's lifespan. Epilepsy can be at times life threatening and is likely to be life-limiting - however to what extend depends a lot on how well controlled the epilepsy is. According to epilepsy.com, if the person is otherwise relatively healthy epilepsy should not shorten their lifespan. Which is probably true, however (to me) it gives the slightly misleading impression that people can do things to help them become "relatively healthy", whereas what they are actually witnessing are epileptics who happen to be randomly lucky in their health.

Gaitatzis et al in their study of "Life expectancy in people with newly diagnosed epilepsy " (pubmed 15371287) conclude that "Reduction in life expectancy can be up to 2 years for people with a diagnosis of idiopathic/cryptogenic epilepsy, and the reduction can be up to 10 years in people with symptomatic epilepsy. Reductions in life expectancy are highest at the time of diagnosis and diminish with time". The fact that reduction in life expectancy reduces the further away you get from diagnoses indicates that epilepsy which is treated and well controlled poses much fewer issues than un-managed epilepsy.