Child Stroke Survivors Prone to Seizures

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Bleeding into brain tissue is a type of stroke called intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH). Each year, an estimated 6.4 newborns and children per every 100,000 in the United States suffer strokes. About half of the strokes are hemorrhagic, typically caused by rupturing of weakened or malformed blood vessels.

About one-third of American infants and children who suffer bleeding into brain tissue, may later have seizures and as many as 13 percent will develop epilepsy within two years.

In the largest study of its kind, researchers tracked 73 subjects including 53 children, ranging in age from one month to 18 years, and 20 newborns, who experienced ICH between 2007 and 2012 at three hospitals.

About 60 percent of the newborns and 43 percent of the older children had visible seizures at the time of the stroke or within a week after.

Of 32 patients who had continuous electroencephalographic monitoring, 28 percent had seizures that otherwise would have gone undetected; and about 13 percent of all the study subjects developed epilepsy within two years.

Patients who had elevated pressure in the brain that required medical or surgical treatment were more likely to have later seizures and epilepsy.

"Information on the risk for later seizures and epilepsy provides practitioners with concrete numbers that can be presented to families," said Lauren A. Beslow, M.D., M.S.C.E., lead study author and now an instructor of pediatrics and neurology at Yale University in New Haven, Conn.

A key strength of the study is that data was collected in real time, rather than after the fact. But with just 73 patients and few that had remote seizures or developed epilepsy, the team could not explore all potential risk factors for the development of epilepsy. However, the researchers do plan to explore whether these subtle seizures are a risk factor for more seizures, epilepsy or other problems over the long-term.

SOURCE: American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference, February, 2013