[Etiology of epilepsy in adolescents]

To review the etiology of epilepsies in adolescent patients treated at the Child Neurology Clinic, during the years 1995-1997.

All 13 years old patients, or older, were selected and considered adolescents.

A total of 863 patients with epileptic seizures were reviewed. Among them, 225 were epileptic adolescents and another 8 were adolescents with a single seizure or with several seizures clustering into a single event. Among the former, 163 suffered from partial epilepsy and 62 from generalized epilepsy. Partial epilepsies were distributed as: idiopathic (69), remote symptomatic (49) and cryptogenic (45). Generalized epilepsies were: idiopathic (22), cryptogenic (16) and cryptogenic-remote symptomatic (24). The latter included the Lennox-Gastaut syndrome, West syndrome, polymorphic epilepsy, etc. The etiology of these patients and related literature are reviewed in order to study the proper nosologic location of these entities.