Early seizures after moderate closed head injury.

The incidence and clinical significance was studied in 2574 closed head injury patients, each of them having a Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) 9 to 12 after trauma. All patients underwent computerized tomography (CT) after being admitted to the emergency service. One hundred and six patients (4.1%) experienced seizures within 1 week after head injury; 46 of these (1.8% of the series) had seizures within 24 hours after trauma. There was no statistically significant difference between the early seizure and seizure free group of patients in gender, age and GCS with the exception of cause of injury (p < 0.01). The incidence of intracerebral parenchymal damage was found to be higher with seizures developing between day 2 and day 7 (80%) than those with seizures developing within 24 hours (54.3%). Analysing the data revealed that early posttraumatic seizures were not related to the presence of intracerebral parenchymal damage on CT scan. The occurrence of early seizures did not affect the mortality and outcome of moderate closed head injury patients.