Clinical Profile of Early Childhood Epilepsy: A Cross Sectional Study in a Tertiary Care Hospital.

Epilepsy is one of the most common chronic neurological disorder in children. Incidence is highest in children less than 3 years of age. This cross sectional study was conducted at outpatient department of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University (BSMMU), Dhaka from January 2010 to December 2010 to explore clinical profile of early childhood epilepsy. Total 50 Children with two or more unprovoked seizure after 28 days up to 36 months of age were included in this study. Majority cases were in the age group of 1 to 12 months (56%) with male predominance (78%). Onset of first seizures was found to be the highest at the age group 0-1 month (50%) with generalized seizures (66%) as the most common type of initial seizures. Highest 16(32%) patients presented with tonic clonic seizure followed by clonic seizure in 15(30%) and tonic in 11(22%) patients. Myoclonic seizure was found to be 4(8%). Only 4(8%) cases were presented with infantile spasm. Majority cases were associated with cerebral palsy (72%). Family history of epilepsy was present in 16%. EEG was done in all patients. Among them 62% were abnormal. Total 21 cases had done CT scan of brain. Among them 6(28.6%) were normal and 15(71.4%) were abnormal. The abnormal findings were cerebral atrophy 73.3%, ventricular dilatation 13.3%, encephalomalacia 6.7% and cerebral infractions were found in 26.7%. In this study majority of cases in 22(44%) were treated with Phenobarbitone (PHB) as a first line drug followed by Valproate (VPA) in 19(38%). Limited study has been conducted on early childhood epilepsy in Bangladesh. The result of this study might be helpful for further large scale study in the field of early childhood epilepsy.