Correlation between the Handedness and Clinical Findings in Children with Epilepsy

Kim, Pu Jin; Nam, Sang Ook; Park, Hee Ju

Abstract

PURPOSE: Some reports left handedness is more common in epileptic patients compared with normal populations, but the study on this topics are rare. This can be due to epilepsy itself or brain lesion in epileptic patients. The study about the handedness in epileptic patients may help identifying the relationship of handedness and epilepsy, symptomatic epilepsy, sites of brain lesion, age at first seizure attack, family history of epilepsy.
METHODS
Subjects were 158 children with epilepsy who were admitted and able to describe the handedness at the Department of Pediatrics, Pusan national university hospital between January 1996 and August 1999. We reviewed their sex, age, handedness. At patient group, age at first seizure, age distribution, family history of epilepsy, seizure type, etiology of epilepsy, causes of symptomatic epilepsy, site of brain lesion, localization by EEG were analyzed. Control group is 158 children without neurologic problem. We analysed handedness according to its variables.
RESULTS
There was no statistical significance in handedness between epileptic group and control group. There was no significant difference in handedness according to age at first seizure attack, seizure type, family history of epilepsy and age distribution. The left handedness is more common significantly in the group of symptomatic epilepsy, left side brain lesion and focal abnormality by EEG recording.
CONCLUSION
We can find significant difference between symptomatic epileptic patient group and control group, especially in the case of the left brain lesion and focal abnormality by EEG recording. In the case of bilateral or diffuse brain lesion, most of patients showed right handedness(87.5%). Accordingly, we concluded that high prevalence of left-handedness in children with epilepsy is more related with left side brain lesion than epilepsy itself. We assumed the social factors strongly affect the handedness of epileptic patients when we see that most of patients show the right handedenss in the bilateral or diffuse brain lesions.