Childhood Occipital Epilepsy (Gastaut type)

Etiologies: Considering a certain relationship with heredity (which may involve complex polygenic genetic patterns), about 1/3 of patients have a family history of febrile seizures or epilepsy, and 9-16% have a family history of migraine.

Age of onset: mostly between 3 and 16 years old (peak 8-9 years old), 50-60% resolve within 2-4 years after onset.

Seizure characteristics: mainly pure occipital seizures such as visual abnormalities, some will have headache after the seizure, about 70% are accompanied by eye deflection (often accompanied by ipsilateral head deflection), and some can progress to hemiclonic or generalized tonic-clonic seizures. The duration of each seizure is brief but often frequent (it can be several times a day or a week, but the duration of each seizure is generally less than 3 minutes [1-2].

EEG: Background: normal. Interictal: occipital spike or spike-and-wave can be seen, and epileptic discharge increases when eyes closed or sleep. Ictal: appearance of occipital faster rhythms [1-2].

Brain MRI: Most of them are normal.

Developmental progress: Most of them are normal.

References

1. Panayiotopoulos.  癫痫综合征及临床治疗.  北京 : 人民卫生出版社, 2012.
2. 刘晓燕.  临床脑电图学. 第2版.  北京 : 人民卫生出版社, 2017.