Objectives: Epilepsy with polymorphic seizures is characterised by occurrence alternately two or more types of attacks. It represents a heterogenic group, taking into consideration etiology, course, management and prognosis, especially in the developmental age.
The aim: The aim of this research was to establish a importance of epilepsy with polymorphic seizures in hospitalized with epilepsy children; the characteristics of type of epilepsy and epileptic syndrome, type of seizures, medication and results of pharmacological therapy were studied as well.
Materials and methods: 58 children with epilepsy with polymorphic seizures were included, out of 1225 children hospitalized with epilepsy between the years 1998 and 2004. The group consisted of 30 girls and 28 boys aged 2 weeks to 15. As diagnostic tools, neuroimaging using MRI and CT were performed. Other such as EEG and videoEEG, and also 10 types of examinations were done as well.
Results: Children with epilepsy and polymorfic seizures represented 4.8% of the group hospitalized with epilepsy. The majority of them were infants and children in the pre-school age. The most frequent causes of this type of epilepsy were early encephalopathies, and ceroidolipofuscinosis. Among 13 types of seizures, the most common in analysed cases were myoclonic jerks and tonic-clonic seizures. The most frequently used drugs were valproate and vigabatrin, rendering seizure-free 43% of children. Only in 1/3 of children the intellectual development was normal.
Conclusion: The high frequency and heterogenity of epilepsy with polymorphic seizures confirms the opinion that this type of epilepsy constitute a significant issue in the epileptology of the developmental age. In most of the children epilepsy was associated with intellectual impairment, while final etiology of epilepsy in half of the children was not established. Therapy of epilepsy with polymorphic seizures was complicated and seizures were fully controlled in less than one half of the children.