In childhood status epilepticus, better outcomes seen in children with prolonged febrile seizures
TUESDAY, Dec. 4 (HealthDay News) -- For patients with childhood convulsive status epilepticus (CSE), those with prolonged febrile seizures (PFS) seem to have better long-term outcomes than those with epilepsy as a symptom of another underlying neurological problem, or remote symptomatic epilepsy, according to a study presented at the annual meeting of the American Epilepsy Society, held from Nov. 30 to Dec. 4 in San Diego.
Richard Chin, M.D., Ph.D., from University College London, and colleagues examined long-term outcomes in a prospective cohort involving children with childhood CSE. Fifty-three of the enrolled children underwent clinical neurological assessment, cognitive assessment, and brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and were followed for a median of 8.1 years.
The researchers found that, of the 22 children with PFS, all were neurologically normal, all had full-scale IQ score >80, none had epilepsy, and most had normal neuroimaging. Of the eight children with acute symptomatic CSE, one developed epilepsy that remitted, half had normal MRIs, three had abnormal MRIs which were unlikely to be of clinical significance, and all had IQ scores >80. Of 13 children with remote symptomatic CSE, 11 had active epilepsy with significant cognitive (IQ <70) and/or motor impairments, and only two children had normal MRI findings. Of the six children with idiopathic CSE, all had normal neuroimaging and two had active epilepsy and IQ <70, with the other four having IQ >90. Normal neuroimaging and IQ scores above 80 were seen for all the children with unclassified CSE, and none had epilepsy.
"We have good reason to be confident that children with childhood status epilepticus can have good long-term outcomes, based on these preliminary results," Chin said in a statement.
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