Findings of Cerebral Computerized Tomography Scan in Epileptic Children Hospitalized in Ahvaz Golestan Hospital

Abstract

Background: Epilepsy caused by abnormal brain discharges is one of the most common neurological diseases. The main goal of imaging in epilepsy is primarily to identify underlying abnormalities, such as vascular malformations and tumors, that may have a specific treatment and, in the next grade, syndromic and etiologic diagnosis of epilepsy. In this project, the findings of computerized tomography (CT) scan of children admitted to the neurology department of Ahvaz Golestan hospital during the years 2012 and 2013 with final diagnosis of epilepsy were studied. Methods: This retrospective study was conducted on patients, who were admitted to Ahvaz Golestan hospital with a final diagnosis of epilepsy at the pediatric neurology department. By referring to the archives, all records of the patients were examined and the data were collected based on gender, age, CT scan, and abnormalities of the patients. For the descriptive analysis of data, tables and figures were used. Data analysis was performed using the SPSS 20.0. Software. Results: In this study, 85 patients with a mean age of 5.69 ± 4.05 years, the youngest of whom was one month and the oldest was 15 years old, were studied. Also, 44 of them were female and 41 were male. Among 34 patients with non-normal CT scan, 15 cases (44.1%), seven (20.6%), six (17.6%), three (8.8%), two (5.9%), and one case (2.9%) had congenital anomalies, nervous system infections, ischemichypoxic processes, neurocutaneous syndromes, neoplasm, and post-traumatic encephalopathy, respectively. Conclusions: According to this study, given that CT scans are performed only in certain cases with epilepsy and are not used to detect the cause of epilepsy, in patients with any change in duration and severity or type of epilepsy, it is required to reject other underlying causes or to expand and create possible life-threatening causes.