Epilepsy duration, febrile seizures, and cerebral glucose metabolism.

Purpose: Studies using magnetic resonance imaging have shown that reduced hippocampal volume is associated with a history of febrile seizures, the duration of epilepsy, and the number of generalized tonic-clonic seizures. It is uncertain whether these factors have the same influence on functional as on structural measures of the integrity of the epileptogenic zone.

Methods: We used positron emission tomography (PET) with fluorine 18 2-deoxyglucose to study 91 patients with temporal lobe seizure foci localized by ictal video-EEG.