[Early childhood brain damage and epilepsy. Results of a clinical and electroencephalographic cross-sectional study].

Among 593 children treated as inpatients because of epilepsy, 191 (32.2%) showed indications of a pre- and/or perinatal brain damage. Under partial consideration of another six children (7.8%) with postnatal brain damage, the relations of various clinical and encephalographic parameters between the time of the brain damage and the occurrence of epilepsy were studied. The risk to fall ill with epilepsy after an infantile brain damage is independent of the time the brain damage took place. Children with a perinatal brain damage, however, show the prognostically more unfavourable form of epilepsy with a higher frequency of attacks and greater difficulties of influencing the disease with drugs. Children below the age of six years predominantly showed an occipital localisation of the foci spread over several brain regions and associated with a tendency to attacks while in older children temporally localised foci occurred more frequently.