Prophylactic Antiepileptic Drugs for Intraparanchymal Hemorrhage Patients in Salah Al-Den General Hospital

Intraparenchymal hemorrhage considers the most severe form of stroke and has a significant cause of death. There are many cases associated with seizures development. Risk factors for post-hemorrhagic stroke seizure are cortical involvement, large lesion (involving more than one lobe), lobar hemorrhage, and male sex. The post-hemorrhagic stroke seizures affect inversely on fatality rate, recovery period and neurological outcomes.the aim of the research is to assess the effect of depakin to prevent the incidence of seizure in patient with spontaneous non-traumatic, non-aneurysmal intraparenchymal hemorrhage (NTNA-IPH) and to evaluate the effect of depakine on the fatality rate.

The study involved 100 patients with a definite diagnosis of NTNA-IPH. Type of the study was prospective comparative, which done in Salah-Al-den general hospital. The duration period was 10 months. The cases were classified into two groups A and B, each one consist of 50 patients. Depakine in a dose of 400mg per day for 30 days was given for group A while group B didn't be given the drug, and this is a control group. The cases of each group were followed up for 6 months from the starting of attack and during follow up, patients were monitored for development of seizure.

The study result represent 14.28% of patients taking depakine had been developed seizure (6 patients from total 42 patients) and about 34.10% of patients not taking depakine had been developed seizure (13 patients from total 38 patients) with a significant difference between the two groups. Partial seizures were represent about 13.75% of post-hemorrhagic stroke seizures, myoclonic seizures 5% and tonic clonic seizure 5% in total of both groups. The overall incidence of post-hemorrhagic stroke seizure in the total 80 patients was 23.75%. The study showed that fatality rate in patients receiving depakine was 12% while fatality rate in patients not receiving depakine was 24% with a significant difference between patients with depakine and patients without depakine.

Of this study shows that NTNA-IPH founds most commonly between 45–71 years old. The incidence of seizures can be decreased by two-folds by using of depakine as a prophylactic drug in a patients with IPH and the use of depakine in the prophylaxis against post-hemorrhagic stroke seizure have a significant role in reducing the fatality rate and improving survival.