Epileptic seizures and epilepsy in children after stroke

Abstract

Despite the low prevalence of cerebrovascular diseases in childhood, up to 60% of children realize acute symptomatic epileptic seizures and up to 30% of patients develop post-stroke epilepsy in the long-term period. The lack of a unified terminology and temporal criteria for both acute symptomatic epileptic seizures and post-stroke epilepsy complicates the analysis of the studied groups. Many studies are limited to small groups, proprietary terminology, different age medians, and inclusion criteria. Both clinical and instrumental risk factors for the development of post-stroke epilepsy in childhood have not been identified, which makes it difficult to identify risk groups and predict the outcome in the long term period. The only significant risk factor in most publications is «younger age», but its boundaries are blurred. Most studies are retrospective, which may affect the incidence and type of epileptic seizures in acute cerebrovascular accident. Electroencephalography is the most informative method for detecting subclinical changes and identifying risk groups. Continuous electroencephalography is effective primarily in the detection of non-convulsive status epilepticus. Currently, there are no unified protocols for examining stroke patients, both at the onset and in follow-up. The search for articles was carried out in the scientific platforms PubMed, Google Scholar, eLIBRARY.