Risk Factors And Outcome Of Febrile Seizures In Children With Epilepsy

Abstract

Febrile seizures are a common variant of paroxysmal states in pediatric practice. These are episodes of epileptic seizures that occur in preschool children with hyperthermia that is not associated with neuroinfection. Febrile seizures in most cases are transient in preschool children, but may also be part of the structure of individual epileptic syndromes. In everyday neurological practice, there is no unified approach to the diagnosis and statistical accounting of this pathology, which, in turn, makes it difficult to obtain reliable data on the level of prevalence of the disease in individual regions and in the country as a whole. [1,2,5]. The outcome of febrile seizures has long been the subject of conflicting opinions. According to epidemiological studies, febrile seizures are the most common manifestation of a predisposition to epilepsy in childhood, and in patients with epilepsy, febrile seizures in the anamnesis occur in 15-25%. Afebrile seizures following febrile seizures occur in 2-7% of patients. The percentage of transformation of febrile seizures into epilepsy is also small and does not exceed 2-10% among children with a history of febrile seizures. The risk of developing epilepsy after complex febrile seizures may be 10-20% [3,4]. Prognostic factors for epilepsy in children with febrile seizures are intensively studied. It is assumed that factors such as family burden of epilepsy, the complex nature of febrile seizures, prolonged seizures, disorders in neuropsychiatric development from birth, increase the risk of unprovoked seizures. The value of the established factors for sub sequent epilepsy in children with febrile seizures requires further study [6,7].