an epidemiologic study of 389 children with epilepsy in southern iran

how to cite this article: inaloo s, katibeh p. an epidemiologic study of 389 children with epilepsy in southern iran.iranian journal of child neurology2011;5(4):15-20 objective approximately 4% of the world's population experience one or more febrile seizures during their lifetime, and 0.5-1% of the population has active epilepsy.less than one-third of the reported seizures are categorized as epilepsy. the cause of established epilepsy is important in determining the treatment and prognosis. materials & methods we studied 389 cases of documented epilepsy in children aged 2 months to 18 years who visited the hospital for neurologic examination during 2005-2010.chi-square test or fisher's exact test was performed for categorical variables. results the most common age for the first seizure was below 2 years, and the most common type of epilepsy was generalized tonic-clonic seizure. electroencephalography (eeg) showed an epileptic pattern in 60%, 29.8%, and 51% of the patients with idiopathic, symptomatic, and cryptogenic epilepsy, respectively. this pattern was significantly different among these 3 categories of epilepsy. conclusion the most common type of seizure was cryptogenic; 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