Typical absences in a patient with serious head injury
Introduction. Head injury is the commonest cause of symptomatic or secondary epilepsy and one of its most serious sequelas. Typical absence seizures are well defined clinically and electroencephalographically and are seen in age-related idiopathic epilepsies. There are very few descriptions of seizures of typical absences that were symptomatic of tumors or other structural lesions. Clinical case. We describe the case of a nine year old boy who had had a severe head injury at the age of four years. When he was seven years old he started to have seizures with all the clinical and electroencephalographic features of typical absences. Conclusions. In this case, taking the age of the patient into account, the APF, APP, electroclinical character[1]istics of the seizures, neurological and clinical condition, the problem was to decide whether the seizures were idiopathic or symptomatic of a cerebral lesion. This was important for treatment and prognosis. The answer could only be obtained by follow[1]up and assessment of the response to specific treatment for petit mal
Caso clínico Describimos el caso de un niño de 9 años de edad con antecedentes de TCE grave sufrido a los 4 años. A los 7 comienza a presentar crisis con todas las características clínicas y electroencefalográficas de las crisis de ausencia típicas.
Conclusiones En el caso que nos ocupa, y teniendo en cuenta la edad del paciente, los APF, los APP, las características electroclínicas de las crisis y el cuadro clínico neurológico, la problemática reside en precisar si estas crisis son idiopáticas o sintomáticas a la lesión cerebral, con la importancia que tiene esta precisión desde el punto de vista terapéutico-pronóstico. La respuesta sólo la puede dar el seguimiento evolutivo del paciente y la respuesta al tratamiento anti-‘petit mal’ específico
