[Multimodal evoked potentials in partial epilepsy in children]

A multimodal evoked potential study was realised in three groups of children or adolescents 5 to 15 years old. The first group included 25 normal non-epileptic subjects; the second group was composed of 27 subjects with partial idiopathic epilepsy (PIE) (benign childhood epilepsy with centro-temporal spike; childhood epilepsy with occipital paroxysms); the third group was formed of 20 subjects with partial symptomatic epilepsy (PSE) without patent anatomical lesion or with anatomical lesion. Recording for each subject included: flash visual evoked potentials, pattern visual evoked potentials, brainstem auditory evoked potentials and somatosensory evoked potentials. Each curve obtained was studied for the response morphology, the measure of the different wave latencies, the inter-peak latencies (conduction time) and the amplitudes. A statistical treatment of the data was performed to evaluate the significance of variation of the different parameter values obtained for the various groups. Among the significantly modified parameters, we found: an increase of the amplitudes in the PIE and a decrease in the PSE, specially when an anatomical lesion exists; an asymmetrical amplitude of the somatosensory responses in the PIE with centro-temporal spike; an increase of the central somatosensory conduction time in the PSE with anatomical lesion.