Regional Demographic Analysis of Status Epilepticus in Children

Background: Status epilepticus is the most frequent neurologic emergency in children. Mortality is estimated as 3-15%, with a much higher morbility. Etiology depends on age and most episodes may be triggered by infectious processes and previous lesions / congenit malformations of central nervous system.

Objective: To described the demographics of children admitted in a regional pediatric service with status epilepticus, detailed by age groups.

Methods: Retrospective analysis of department’s records from January 1st 2011 to December 31st 2018. Inclusion criteria: all children with status epilepticus as motive of hospital admission and age from 29 days to 17 years and 365 days. Exclusion criteria: age under 29 days; children with status epilepticus occurring only after hospitalization. Studied variables: gender, age, comorbidities, clinical presentation, etiology, origin and destination after discharge.

Results: A total of 14 episodes from 11 children (71,4% male) were enrolled, representing 9,4% of all children admitted with seizures. Age range was 1month to 13 y/o (<1y/o:n=2, 1-3y/o;n=5, 4-9y/o:n=4; 10-13y/o:n=3). Four presented with fever, all aged 1 to 3 years old. It was first seizure episode in 2 children, both with no fever. Most comon comorbidities were epilepsy due to structural malformation (n=3), genetic syndrome with epilepsy (n=3), epileptic encephalopathy (n=3) and perinatal hypoxic-ischemic cerebral palsy (n=2). The majority of crisis where related to those comordibities. Generalized tonic-clonic were the most common unset. One patient died during hospitalization and 1 was transfered to Pediatric Intensive Care.

Conclusions: Being the only hospital in a regional island area, it receives all children needing hospital care, so those data are representative of the region’s demography. There was male but no age predominance. Most of etiology were according to literature, but there was no case of infectious processes. Comorbidities was the most important factor in this study and may be an important predictor.