Quality of life in childhood epilepsy with lateralized epileptogenic foci

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Measuring quality of life (QOL) helps to delineate mechanisms underlying the interaction of disease and psychosocial factors. In adults, epileptic foci in the left temporal lobe led to lower QOL and higher depression and anxiety as compared to the right-sided foci. No study addressed the development of QOL disturbances depending on the lateralization of epileptogenic focus. The objective of our study was to examine QOL in children with lateralized epileptiform discharges.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Thirty-one parents of children with epilepsy filled the Health-Related Quality of Life in Childhood Epilepsy Questionnaire (QOLCE). Fifteen children had foci in the left hemisphere and sixteen in the right, as verified with Electroencephalography (EEG) examinations.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We found a significant correlation between foci lateralization and reduced QOL (Spearman's rho = 0.361, p < 0.046). Children with right hemispheric foci exhibited lower overall QOL, particularly in five areas: anxiety, social-activities, stigma, general-health, and quality-of-life.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>We demonstrated for the first time that in children left- and right-hemispheric foci were associated with discordant QOL scores. Unlike in adults, foci in the right hemisphere led to worse emotional and social functioning demonstrating that seizures impact the brain differentially during development.</p

[Oral language evaluation battery of aphasic children: A French standardization]

We propose here the French standardization of an European oral language battery (ELOLA) for the study of children with acquired brain lesions. The verbal tasks proposed to 200 control children aged 4 to 12 were: verbal fluency, repetition of words and nonwords, naming test (9 semantic categories and naming of actions), semantic, and syntactic comprehension. One half of the children came from a low socio-cultural class and the other half from a higher social-cultural class. Performance increased with age; nonword repetition was better for girls than for boys and children with low socio-cultural level performed worse than the other children in 3 out of 7 tasks. We stressed the inferior limit scores for each task, defining the pathological from the normal language at each age group. The ELOLA battery, proposed for aphasic children, can also be appropriate for oral language evaluation in other clinical situations in children