Abstracts

Rationale: To analyse the clinical and prognostic features of 81 patients with NFLE and a long follow-up. Methods: We analysed 81 NFLE patients (49 males) with a follow-up ranging 5-25 years (12.7 years ±6.8). All patients underwent a full clinical, neuroradiological and neurophysiological examination. At the end of the follow-up we considered 2 groups: patients with Negative Evolution (NE-seizure frequency varying from daily to pluriyearly: 44 patients, 54.3 %) and with Positive Evolution (PE-seizure-free for at least 1 year or with sporadic seizure: 37 patients, 45.7%). Results: At disease onset, seizures were daily in most patients in both NE (36%) and PE (35%) groups. At the last visit, most NE patients presented plurimonthly (31%) pluriweekly (22%) or pluriyearly seizures (20%) and only 17.8% still had daily seizures. Among NE patients the mean age at onset of epilepsy was lower than in PE patients (PE 15.5 years vs NE 11.1 years; p=0.02); a family history of febrile seizures (FS) was found only in the PE group (13.5%). No significant differences were observed between the 2 groups in seizure type, history of FS, status epilepticus, family history of epilepsy (PE 35.1% vs NE 36.4%) and parasomnias (PE 37.8%vs NE 38.6%), secondary generalization, seizures also in wakefulness, interictal epileptiform abnormalities. Conclusions: The only 2 significant differences between NE and PE group are an earlier age at onset in the NE group, that seems to be a negative prognostic factor, and a positive family history for FC reported only in the PE group.