Abstracts

Acute Symptomatic Seizures differ from epilepsy in that they have a clearly identifiable proximate cause and they are not characterized by tendency to recur spontaneously. But we hypothesized that acute symptomatic seizures with status epilepticus (SE) have an increased risk of subsequent seizure than those without status epilepticus., We retrospectively studied five hundred and twelve children with seizures visited our hospital from January 1998 to December 2003. Among those children, 167 patients were determined as provoked seizures, and the patients were followed up for 2 years., One hundred and nine children had acute symptomatic seizures. The ages of first seizures were 1.58 [plusmn] 2.53 years. Causes in order of frequency were acute gastroenteritis (31.0%), minor infections (23.9%), CNS infections (7.0%), encephalopathy (7.0). At two year follow-up, the incidence of the unprovoked seizure was 31.1% for children with acute symptomatic seizures. The risk of the unprovoked seizure was significantly greater for children with acute symptomatic seizures with SE (56.3%) than those without SE (25.2%)., The leading cause of acute symptomatic seizures was acute gastroenteritis. The incidence of subsequent unprovoked seizure was highest in the group of encephalitis/encephalopathy. The risk of for subsequent unprovoked seizure was greater for those with SE than those without SE. The risk of subsequent unprovoked seizures is determined by underlying precipitation factors and children with acute symptomatic seizures with SE should be followed up carefully.,