[Value of pre- and perinatal complications in the etiology of pediatric epilepsies].

Although there is a general agreement on the significance of pre- and perinatal risk factors in the etiology of epilepsy, the etiological relevance of individual prejudicial factors has not been clarified in detail. On the other hand, a monocausal approach is equally misleading. In order to check the significance of possible pre- and perinatal causes of epilepsy in 307 children and adolescents (143 girls and 164 boys), we have correlated them with the results of cranial computer tomography (CCT) in a study of our own. The changing patterns of the attacks were classified in accordance to the epilepsy classification developed by Doose on the basis of the classification of the International League Against Epilepsy. The distribution was as follows: 73 patients with primary generalized seizures (23.8%), 165 with secondary generalized seizures (53.7%), 64 with partial seizures (20.8%) and 5 with unclassified epileptic seizures (1.7%). 39% of these patients revealed abnormal morphological findings in the CCT. Where as in children with primary generalized and partial epilepsy the vast majority (80% and 75% respectively) showed normal findings, this only applied to barely half of the patients with secondary generalized epilepsy. The pathological CCT findings were characterized mainly by diffuse alterations in primary generalized epilepsy. On the other hand, children with secondary generalized epilepsy showed above-average focal defects.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)