[Landau-Kleffner syndrome]

Abstract

In 1957, Landau and Kleffner reported six cases of a "syndrome of acquired aphasia with convulsive disorder". Since this first report more than 130 cases with acquired language disabilities with EEG-abnormalities have been described. Comprehension of language is primarily affected, spike discharges are predominantly found in temporal regions. Facultative symptoms are epileptic seizures and psychiatric disorders. The paper gives a review of the literature describing the clinical manifestations, the therapeutic procedure, the prognosis and the etiological factors of this syndrome, which is even listed in the last version of the ICD-10 and the International Classification of Epilepsies and Epileptic Syndromes.