A Study of Early Epileptic Seizures in Acute Stroke

Cerebrovascular accidents (CVA) are among the most common neurologic problems affecting people of middle and old ages and are one of the causes of seizure in these age groups. Epileptic seizure in patients with stroke occurs in the forms of early and late seizures and could be seen as simple or generalized. The aim of this study was to evaluate the incidence of early seizure in patients with stroke. All 716 patients with cerebrovascular accidents admitted to Imam Khomeini Hospital during the year 2002 participated in this descriptive study. The data were collected using the patients, records. The stroke was diagnosed through clinical findings, CT Scan and MRI (if necessery). Early seizures were documented in 46 (6.4%) of 716 patients, including 16 cases (5%) with atherosclerotic thrombosis, 10 (8.4%) with embolic infarction, 10 (5%) with intra cerebral hemorrhage and 10 (16.9%) with subarachnoid hemorrhage. Twenty-four (52%) out of 46 patients had Tonic- clonic seizures, 14 (30.5%) simple partial seizures, 5 (11%) complex partial seizures and 3 (6.5%) tonic-clonic status. It was found that incidence of early seizures in stroke is 6.4%and early seizures are more common in subarachnoid hemorrhage and embolic infarction than embolic and atherothrombotic infarction.