Evaluation of Risk Factors for Epilepsy in Pediatric Patients with Cerebral Palsy

Cerebral palsy (CP) is a set of etiologically diverse symptoms that change with the child's age. It is one of the most frequent causes of motor disability in children. CP occurs at a frequency of 1.5 to 3.0 per 1000 live-born children. CP often coexists with epilepsy, which is drug-resistant in a high number of cases. The aim of the present study was to analyze the associations between preconception, prenatal, perinatal, neonatal, and infancy risk factors for epilepsy in a group of pediatric patients with CP. We retrospectively analyzed 181 children with CP (aged 4-17 years at diagnosis), hospitalized at the Department of Pediatrics and Developmental Age Neurology in Katowice in the years 2008-2016. Division into particular types of CP was based on Ingram's classification. Data were analyzed using STATISTICA 13.0 (STATSOFT; Statistica, Tulsa, OK, USA). Epilepsy was diagnosed in 102 children (56.35%), of whom 44 (43%) had drug-resistant epilepsy; only in 15 cases (14.71%) was epilepsy susceptible to treatment. The incidence of epilepsy varied between the types of CP. It occurred significantly more often in children with tetraplegia (75%), ataxic form (83%), and mixed form (80%) in comparison to diplegia (32%) and hemiplegia (38%). Maternal hypertension was found to be a risk factor for epilepsy in CP patients (OR = 12.46, p < 0.001) as well as for drug-resistant epilepsy (the odds ratio (OR) = 9.86, p = 0.040). Delivery by cesarean section increased the risk of epilepsy in the CP patients over two-fold (OR = 2.17, p = 0.012). We observed also that neonatal convulsions significantly increased the risk for epilepsy (OR = 3.04, p = 0.011) as well as drug-resistant epilepsy (OR = 4.02, p = 0.002). In conclusion, maternal hypertension, neonatal convulsions, and delivery by cesarean section were the most important factors increasing the risk of epilepsy as well as drug-resistant epilepsy in the analyzed group of patients with CP.