Mortality and clinical features in cases of death among epileptic children.
At a follow-up study of 385 patients with epilepsy beginning under age 15, 22 (5.7%) had died during the first 10 years after the onset of epilepsy and another 11 (2.9%) between 11 and 24 years. Mortality was significantly high in cases with the following clinical features: (1) epilepsy with onset before the first birthday (mortality being 25.5%), (2) symptomatic epilepsy in etiology (17.2%), (3) infantile spasms (40.7%), tonic epilepsy (33.3%) or myoclonic epilepsy (33.3%) as compared with grand mal (5.9%) in seizure type and (4) developmental retardation at the first visit (25.5%). Seizures were not controlled in 31 out of 33 patients at the time of death. The causes of death were status epilepticus or convulsion in 10, pneumonia in 5, severe emaciation in 3, "cerebral palsy" in 5, and drowning, suffocation, traffic accidents or acute lymphocytic leukemia, in one each, and unknown in 6. Most of the patients died at home.
D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004827:Epilepsy / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000401:mortality*; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008607:Intellectual Disability / Q000401:mortality; D007564:Japan; D008297:Male