Clinical Review of the Development Epilepsy in Patients with Febrile Seizure

Hong, Hee Joo; Kim, Min Woo; Lee, Hyun Joo; Chung, Sa Jun; Cho, Ui Hyun

Abstract

PURPOSE: Febrile seizure is a common neurological disorder in children and it has been reported that it may progress to epilepsy in a few cases. We have set forth to carry out a prospective study of patients who developed epilepsy after febrile seizures to determine their clinical characteristics.
METHODS
The subjects of this research were 104 patients who met WHO's definition of epilepsy after at least 6 months had passed since their first seizure of the 612 patients admitted to the pediatrics department of Kyung-hee Medical Center during 5 years from January of 1993 to January of 1998 for their first febrile seizure. Epilepsy was categorized as epileptic seizure according to ILAE(1981).
RESULTS
1) The incidence of epilepsy was highest in children from 3 years to 5 years. 2) Of 104 children who developed epilepsy, 60 children were males and 44 were females. 3) Of children who eventually developed epilepsy, 37% of them had the family history of seizure. 4) Of 612 cases of first attack febile seizure, generalized tonic-clonic type was the most frequent type and at the time of diagnosis of epilepsy, generalized tonic-clonic type was also the most frequent type. 5) The abnormal EEG findings are found in 95% of children who developed epilepsy.
CONCLUSIONS
We observed the clinical characteristics of patients who developed epilepsy after febrile seizures, but we feel that continuous research is necessary in establishing a correlation between the two disorders.