1Associate Professor, Department of Neurology, GMC & Rajindra Hospital, Patiala-147001, Punjab, India, email id: harbagdr@yahoo.co.in
2Professor, Department of Peadiatrics, Adesh Medical College, Bathinda, Punjab, India, akmaheshwari09@yahoo.co.in
3House Physician, Department of Neurology, GMC & Rajindra Hospital, Patiala-147001, Punjab, India
4Senior Resident, Department of Medicine, GMC & Rajindra Hospital, Patiala-147001, Punjab, India
5Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry, GMC & Rajindra Hospital, Patiala-147001, Punjab, India
6Sister-tutor, College of Nursing, Government Medical College and Rajindra Hospital, Patiala-147001, Punjab, India
7Professor, Gian Sagar College of Nursing, Ram Nagar, Banur, Patiala-140601, Punjab, India
Online published on 15 September, 2015.
Epilepsy is one of the oldest known disorders. Epilepsy is responsible for an enormous amount of suffering. Epilepsy knows no geographic, social or racial boundaries and occurs in men and women and affects all ages, but is more frequently diagnosed in infancy, adolescence and old age.
To assess focal and other epilepsies in Punjab.
A door to door, cross-sectional epidemiological survey covering an entire 103,693 population residing in 74 contiguous villages situated outside the municipal limits of the District Headquarter town. General villagelevel workers surveyed all houses under the supervision of medical graduates and paramedical staff followed by detailed work up by postgraduates. Final case identification was done by neurologists.
In the present study, 32.83% of total active epilepsy cases (n = 795) have been found to have focal epilepsy (n = 261). Focal epilepsyincluded cases with focal onset (n = 249), unilateral seizures (n = 11) and one case of benign childhood epilepsy[1]. Active (n = 795) and inactive epilepsy(n = 128) comprised 74.78% and 12.04% of total number of seizure cases (n = 1063) and 86.13% and 13.87% of all epilepsy cases (n = 923), respectively. Non epileptic conditions (n = 122) comprised 11.48% of total number of seizure cases (n = 1063). Single (n = 66) and febrile seizures (n = 38) were predominant among the non epileptic conditions being 6.2% and 3.57% of total number of seizure cases (n = 1063). Active epilepsy cases (n = 795) included electroclinical syndromes and constellations (n = 117, 14.72%), symptomatic (n = 153, 19.24%), probably symptomatic cases (n = 513, 64.53%) and cases with dual diagnosis (n = 12, 1.51%).
Stress on finding out evidence of focalityhas probablyprevented themisclassification offocal seizuresas generalisedseizuresleading to higher frequency ofgeneralisedseizures in thepresentstudy. Lackofuniformdefinitions, terminologyandcriteria for idiopathicandother epilepsies precludes comparison between the present study and other studies.
Epilepsy, Population-based, Epidemiology, Focal, Active epilepsy
