An overview of pediatric seizure disorders and epileptic syndromes.

Seizures are common in infants and children and must be differentiated from a wide variety of other neurological and nonneurological disorders which include episodic disturbances of behavior. If the diagnosis is clear, then one must decide if the seizure is an isolated event and unlikely to recur (as are many afebrile generalized convulsive seizures in early childhood), a symptom of underlying cerebral pathology, or part of an epileptic syndrome. The latter may be a potentially lethal neurodegenerative disease or a benign epilepsy with excellent outcome. This review will discuss the various aspects of epilepsy in the pediatric age group, emphasize the benign nature of most seizures in children (including many forms of partial, or focal, seizures), and present an overview of the more serious epileptic syndromes. The myoclonic epilepsies will be used as a model to illustrate the wide scope of epileptic phenomena in infants and children.