Abstracts

We reported that the prevalence of left handedness is significantly higher in the children with epileptsy than that of normal control. We found it was attributed to higher prevalance of left handedness in symptomatic epilepsy. There was no difference in left handedness between idiopathic epilepsy and control group. Some author claims that footedness might be more accurate to predict the lateralization of the lesion than handedness because handedness is more affected by education and social influence. We investigated the footedness in the children with epilepsy to see if there is any difference between the epilepsy and control groups and if footedness is more informative to clarify the lateralization of lesion site. Subjects were 130 epileptic patients who visited pediatric out-patient clinic of Pusan National University Hospital from June 2001 to August 2001. Controls were 130 children without history of convulsion or neurologic problem. We let them carry out or answer for each 10 item about the use of hand and foot. We defined handedness and footedness as the hand and foot that carries out more than 5 items dominantly. We analyzed age, type of seizure, cause of epilepsy and site of brain lesion in symptomatic group by reviewing the medical records in subject group. In 130 epileptic patients, left handedness and left footedness were 20.0% and 15.7% which are significantly higher than 4.0% and 5.6% in control group (P[lt]0.05). But there was no significant difference in left handedness and left footedness between idiopathic epilepsy group and control group. However left handedness in symptomatic epilepsy group was 45.0% and left footedness was 31.4%, which were significantly higher than those of control group (P[lt]0.05). According to the site of brain lesion in symptomatic group, all patients with abnormality in left hemisphere showed left handedness, but only 57% of the patients showed left footedness. In the patients who have abnormality in both hemisphere or diffuse brain lesion, left handedness was 25.9% and left footedness was 36.8%. Concordance rate of left handedness and left footedness was 80.0% in control group, 87.5% in idiopathic epilepsy group and 76.9% in symptomatic epilepsy group. Left footedness is more prevalent in the epilepsy group than control group. There was no difference in left footedness between idiopathic epilepsy and control group. This is attributed to the higher prevalence of left footedness in symptomatic epilepsy. But the corcordance rate between footedness and lesion site was lower than that of handedness, which was against the hypothesis that left footedness might be higher than left handedness in epilepsy patients because footedness is less influenced by social environment.