Benign childhood epilepsy with centro-temporal spikes

• Autor(a) principal: Amorim, Ângela Cerqueira
• Data de Publicação: 2010
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.6/734
• topic: Epilepsia; Epilepsia Rolândica - Infância; Epilepsia Rolândica - Aspectos neuropsicológicos; Epilepsia Rolândica - Aspectos cognitivos; Epilepsia Rolândica - Quociente de inteligência; Epilepsia Rolândica - Aspectos comportamentais; Ondas centrotemporais

Benign childhood epilepsy with centro-temporal spikes is a form of epilepsy with no demonstrable anatomic lesion showing spontaneous remission. Seizure frequency is low, typically 2-5 total seizures, but also quite variable, ranging from a single lifetime episode to multiple seizures per day. The prognosis is excellent, with 98% of children outgrowing the disorder by puberty. Although the absence of cognitive deficits has always been considered a prerequisite for diagnosis of this illness, recent studies have revealed mild neuropsychological impairments in different areas, including language, attention, executive functions, memory, visuo-spatial orientation, and phonological processing. These cognitive deficits may be associated with learning difficulties and decline in school performance, which longitudinal studies have shown to be transitory in the majority of cases. The aims of this study were to assess the types of cognitive problems which may be encountered in this population, to evaluate the course of cognitive and learning capacities during the active phase of epilepsy, and to see if there was a correlation with paroxysmal activity on the electroencephalogram. The study combined retrospective neuropsychological and electroencephalografical results of 8 children presenting with typical benign partial epilepsy with Rolandic spikes and occipital spikes as well as the results of 5 children belonging to a hospital-based control group. In total, 13 children with ages ranging between 5 to 11 years were included and the following tests were carried out: anamnesis, neurological examination, electroencephalogram, and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children or Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence-Revised. As a result of this study’s various limitations, namely the limited sample size, no significant correlations were found between the factors connected to the epileptic nature of BECTS, such as the number of seizures, age of onset of the disease, CTS lateralization and the results in the neuropsychological tests. Therefore it remains to be shown whether these correlations exist, as the neurobiology of Rolandic discharges and their relationship to cognitive dysfunction and epilepsy require further study.