Changes in seizure symptoms during the course of febrile seizures

Clinical symptoms of febrile seizures; study of patients whose seizures were observed from the onset Masaaki Ogihara, Akinori Hoshika, Tasuku Miyajima, Naoto Yamada, Chuan-Yu Wang (Department of Pediatrics, Tokyo Medical College, Tokyo, Japan) Introduction. There have been very few reports of ictal EEGs obtained during febrile seizures (FS), and ictal symptomatology of FS have not yet been fully clarified. We examined the seizure types of FS, based on detailed clinical symptoms observed from the seizure onset in FS cases. Subjects and Methods. The patients consisted of 171 children with FS (96 boys and 75 girls), and 178 seizures were examined. The ages of the patients ranged from 3 months to 6 years and 6 months, with an average of 2 years 5 months. Simple FS accounted for 96%, complex FS for 4%. We obtained detailed clinical symptomatologies from the parents for the 5-year period of 1992-1996. The questions regarding symptoms were asked by three specialist (MO, AH, TM) who have been engaged in the treatment of epilepsy for more than 10 years. As for the classification of symptoms, taking a clinical point of view; we used the following terms; ‘ vibratory tonic’, ‘ vibratory generalized tonic clonic (vibratory GTC)’ and ‘stare’ which were presumed to correspond to akinetic or atonic type seizures. Results. (1) The clinical symptoms of FS and the numbers of the patients were as follows: