Background

• Seizure is a paroxysmal alteration in neurological function resulting from abnormal excessive cortical neuronal electrical activity.
• Epilepsy is a chronic condition characterised by recurrent seizures
• 5% of children are at risk for epilepsy.
• In order to diagnose the cause of epilepsy various investigations like NSG, XRAY, CT, MRI, EEG are used.
• MRI has emerged as an important tool in detecting etiology of epilepsy.

Objectives

1. To detect and characterize various lesions causing epilepsy in pediatric age group(0-12 years).
2. To detect the frequency with which they occurred using MRI.

Material and Methods

Type of Study: Prospective hospital based study among 60 paediatric patients presented with epilepsy referred to the Department of Radio diagnosis, King George Hospital, Visakhapatnam.

• All the patients were subjected to MRI using GE 1.5 Tesla.
• Sequences :T1,T2, FLAIR, GRE, Diffusion
• CEMRI,MRS, MRV were included when indicated.
• Lesions were characterized in location, signal intensity using different sequences

Results: In our study, we have found 36 (60%)patients had positive findings on MRI while 24(40%) patients had normal MRI. Among 60 patients, iincidence is more in 7-12 yrs group f/b 1-3 yrs. Among 60 patients, patients with normal MRI are 24(40%), Infectious etiology-13(33.3%), Hypoxic etiology-8(13.3%), Congenital-6(10%), Demyelinating-4(6.6%), Vascular-3(5%), Tumours-2(3.4%)

Discussion:  Out of 60 patients, epilepsy incidence is more in  7-12 years(45%) f/b 1-3 years (21.6%), The Male:Female ratio-1.2:1.   36 patients have abnormal findings in our study in which infection is the most common etiology(33.3%) followed by hypoxia(11.6%) .Metabolic causes include least common etiology (1.4%) followed by vascular causes(3.4%)

Conclusion: MRI having high spatial resolution, excellent inherent soft tissue contrast, multiplanar imaging capability and being non radiation modality, emerged as an important tool in imaging of pediatric epilepsy,

MRI can identify, localize and characterize subtle lesions with better spatial and temporal resolution.

MRI thus became the investigation of choice in the evaluation of Pediatric epilepsy.

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Dr T. Savitri

Associate Professor, Department of Radiodiagnosis AMC, Visakhapatnam AP