title: [Symptomatic epilepsy: review of 208 patients].
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To determine the main etiological mechanisms of symptomatic epilepsy and its frequency according to age.
  
  
  METHODS
  We made a retrospective analysis of 208 patients admitted during a period of four and a half years, studying the variables: age, sex and type of seizures: simple partial, secondarily generalized partial, complex partial, tonic-clonic, generalized tonic, and also EEG and neuroimaging.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The main etiological mechanisms found were: vascular (31.25%), alcoholic (12.01%), intracranial disorders (9.61%), traumatic (5.28%), degenerative (5.28%), infectious (2.88%) and cryptogenic (33.65%). In the last group there was an outstandingly large proportion of patients with silent infarcts. When considering vascular epilepsy, those seizures occurring during the acute phase of the stroke (24/65) are differentiated from those of late onset (41/65). In the latter there was a marked predominance of ischemic etiology (48.78% corresponded to extensive infarcts in the territory of the middle cerebral artery; 36.58% were associated with partial infarcts) probably because of the greater frequency of ischemic stroke as compared with hemorrhagic stroke. After the acute phase, the latency was of 10.68 +/- 0.43 months and the most frequent seizures were tonic-clonic (48.78%).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  In persons under 30 years of age, etiology is multifactorial; between 30 and 50 years of age alcoholic epilepsy (39.53%) and traumatic epilepsy (11.62%) predominate; over the age of 50 years the cause was vascular in 43.5%. In the latter age group there was a high proportion of patients with heraldic seizures.
authors.affiliation: Servicio de Neurología, Hospital Clínico Universitario Lozano Blesa, Zaragoza, España.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Santos
authors.forename: J A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Mauri
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: López del Val
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Tejero
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Morales
mesh_terms: D000208:Acute Disease; D000328:Adult; D004569:Electroencephalography; D004827:Epilepsy / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000209:etiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012189:Retrospective Studies
vernacular_title: Epilepsia sintomática: revisión de 208 pacientes.