A particular evolution of two cases of somatosensory spike epilepsy

"Somatosensory spike epilepsy" is still little known, except in highly specialized places, because of two factors: 1) it is rare (the incidence in our experience is one case in 1,000 new EEGs); 2) the evoked spikes, that constitute the first sign for the evolution of the syndrome, are not systematically sought, and many months can pass before finding one "positive" cases. The evolution of a "positive" case towards epilepsy is represented by a 15% possibility. In this report we present two unique cases of this syndrome; they are of interest because they constitute the first such cases in the literature and also because of the neurophysiological problems that they reveal. The cases are represented by an eight year old girl and by an eleven year old boy, who suffered from the typical form of "sensitive spike epilepsy" characterized by its classical evolution in four stages, with a clinical phase of about one year. Two years after the cessation of previous seizures, they presented a new "bouffee" of partial motor seizures. The EEG abnormalities were in the parietal parasagittal region the first time, while they were situated in the temporoparietal region in the second time. The somatosensory spikes were evoked from the foot the first time and from the fingers the second time. In the second case the trigger zones were only on the left side of the body.