Benign familial neonatal seizures: clinical and electroencephalographic characteristics.

Two families with benign familial neonatal seizures evident over three generations are presented with emphasis on clinical and electroencephalographic features. Benign familial neonatal seizures represent a disorder with the onset of frequent generalized seizures during the first weeks of life. Family history reveals autosomal dominant inheritance of this disorder.

Apnoea and seizures.

We report two infants with near miss sudden infant death syndrome events exhibiting seizure disorders after caffeine treatment, suggesting there is an infant subgroup diagnosed as near miss sudden infant death syndrome who have apnoea possibly with seizures whose seizure threshold may be lowered by central nervous system stimulants like caffeine.

EEG abnormalities and convulsions in juvenile diabetes mellitus.

The clinical and EEG findings were reviewed for 270 juvenile children from the Montreal Children's Hospital Diabetic Clinic in an attempt to correlate the EEG findings at the onset of diabetes mellitus with the future risk of having a convulsion with a hypoglycemic reaction. Compared to a non-diabetic control population, the number of epileptiform EEG abnormalities was significantly increased in the initial EEG of diabetic patients who later had a hypoglycemic convulsion. The initial epileptiform EEG did not help to differentiate those diabetics with recurrent hypoglycemic induced convulsions from diabetics who would have only a single convulsion.

Sodium valproate in the treatment of the intractable childhood epileptic.

Sixty-five children with seizure disorders, who had been treated with multiple anticonvulsants but were poorly controlled, were selected from the Montreal Children's Hospital Convulsive Disorder Clinic and Neurology Service and were treated with sodium valproate (valproate). All types of seizure disorders were included in the group. Rapid oral absorption of the drug lead to peak plasma levels in one to three hours (later peaks occurring if administered after meals).