CAUSES OF INTRACTABLE SEIZURES IN A SURVEY OF 10,000 EPILEPTIC CHILDREN

Although treated properly for epilepsy, a number of epileptic children have intractable seizures and about 5-10 per cent of them do not respond to anti -epileptic drugs. In the years 1986-1996 about 10,000 epileptic patients were treated in the Children's Medical Center in Tehran. A retrospective study of their medical records revealed that 41 of them had intractable seizures. I Of these 41 patients, 56.9% had partial epilepsy, 12.2% grand mal epilepsy, 14 % atypical petit-mal, 7.3% Lennox syndrome, 7.3% infantile spasm and 2.4% myoclonic epilepsy. All of them had received at least two anti-epileptic drugs. 34.1 % were not treated regularly. 31.7% had organic brain dysfunction and 51.6% had behavior disorder (hyperactivity-aggressiveness, etc.). These figures show a lower rate of intractable seizures than that of international statistics. T he most important cause of intractable seizures seems to be irregular treatment of the epilepsy.