Evaluation of CT Findings in Childhood Seizures

INTRODUCTION: Seizures are the most common neurologic disorder in the paediatric age group. Convulsions as such producing a psychological trauma to the parents and to the patients happen to be a major health problem in many developing countries, which needs more attention to ablate from these stressful events. Convulsions in childhood are among the most common acute and life threatening problems which cause the parents immediately consult a doctor. The convulsive disorder is the expression of a sudden, excessive disorderly discharge of neurons in either a structurally normal or diseased cortex. The discharge results in an almost instantaneous disturbance of sensation, loss of consciousness, convulsive movement or some combination of these. Less than one third of seizures in children are caused by epilepsy, a condition in which seizures are triggered recurrently within the brain. AIM OF THE STUDY: Only very few conducted study on the value of CT in infants and childhood convulsion and its yield in different types of convulsion. Since paucity of above study for the patients admitted in peripheral medical institutions, which has stimulated to conduct a study on this. To find out the high yield group, for effective usage and application of CT as a diagnostic tool. To know about commonest findings in convulsive disorders. Detection of treatable causes of intracranial pathology and to explain the prognosis and outcome to the worrying parents and patients. DISCUSSION: The magnitude of problems of convulsions as leading manifestations of a medical or neurological disease can hardly be overstated. The magnitude of the problem will be evident from the figures given below. Paediatric department statistics for the year 2010, Raja Mirasudhar Hospital shows Total number of admissions 4784 No of children admitted with convulsions 397 So 8.3 % of admissions in this hospital is with seizure disorder. Most of the published observations and studies on CT findings in seizure disorder were either they concentrate on neonates or both neonate and childhood. Many studies of CT findings in seizure disorders were conducted on adults than on children. CONCLUSION: 1. The simple partial seizure cases have high yield with around 100% abnormal findings in CT. 2. In generalized seizures, focal with secondary generalization have a high yield when compared to primary generalized tonic clonic which yielded low abnormal findings. 3. Other forms of seizures like absence, complex partial, and myoclonus were in the low yield group showing no abnormality in the CT brain. 4. The commonest finding in the CT brain was infarct followed by granuloma