Determination of Etiology, Epidemiologic and Clinical Characteristics and Outcome of Children with Acute Febrile Encephalopathy in Rasht, 17-Shahrivar hospital

Acute encephalopathy is a condition in which brain function deteriorates rapidly and usually presents with loss of consciousness with or without focal neurologic symptoms. Some of its causes are infections, trauma, toxicities, and metabolic disorders and so on
evaluat etiology, epidemiologic, clinical and para-clinical characteristics and outcome in children with acute febrile encephalopathy during 2013-2014 in educational and remedial 17-Shahrivar hospital, Rasht.
This is a case series and cross sectional study performed during 2013-2014 in 17-Shahrivar hospital, Rasht. All of children between 2 month and 14 years old with acute febrile encephalopathy enrolled in the study. Children with head trauma history or history of underlying metabolic or neurologic disease were excluded. Exact history was taken and clinical examination of neurologic system was done; Then laboratory examinations and related evaluation such as: Cell count and cerebro-spinal fluid, imaging and so on were performed. All of information was fulfilled in a checklist and data was entered in SPSS Ver 19 and analyzed with descriptive tests and Fisher Exact Test.
towenty seven children including 63% male and 37% female were entered in the study which most of them were more than 36 month old. 6.25% of them had headache and 51.9% of them had history of fever for more than 3 days of fever. 74.1% of them had white blood cell changes. Blood, cell count and Cerebro Spinal Fluide(CSF) culture and CSF smear were not positive in any children. 37% of results were enterovirus in viral culture. Towenty two patients had seizure, 4/7% of the children had improved with permanent side effect and none of them were died. Persistent complication of them was spastic cerebral palsy. There was no significant relation between treatment outcome and age group, season, gender and laboratory result of CSF (P>0.05).
Our results showed that in our population one of important cause of acute febrile encephalopathy can be associated with enterovirus factors