Febrile convulsion. A clinical study of 303 patients

The clinical characteristics of 303 patients who had episodes of feverish convulsions (FC) were retrospectively reviewed. No preference was seen for either sex (1.3/1). In 75.3% of the cases, the convulsions occurred in children under two. There was some predominance of tonic-clonic crisis and generalized clonic-tonic convulsions (85.5%) with 21.8% of complex partial crisis. In 44.8% of the cases a perinatal history of high risk was noted. A comparative investigation was carried out in a subgroup of 244 children in who FC vs non-febrile convulsions (NFC) were during two years. In 35.2% of the patients neurological abnormalities were found associated, among them were language difficulties (27.4%) and psychomotor retardation (11.9%). In 36.4% of the cases, the EEG was found to be abnormal, and paroxysmal in 27%. The predominating perinatal pathological complications were perinatal hypoxia-anoxia and prematurity. In 84% of the patients, anti-convulsive medication was administered. Of the 244 patients, 62 (25.4) of them had NFC which were directly related to the number of risk factors and their characteristics. Among those risk factors were partial convulsions, neurological deficit, abnormal EEG, convulsions lasting over 10 minutes and a previous family history of epilepsy. It is noteworthy that 15.7% of the patients had no risk factors related to epilepsy. In those patients who suffered from convulsions from an early age, who had convulsions of a partial--complex type, which lasted over 20 minutes and repeated frequently--were seen to be the most likely to develop epilepsy. The medications prescribed prevented the occurrence of the FC but did not significantly diminish the development of epilepsy. Febrile convulsions; epilepsy; perinatal.