Posttraumatic epilepsy: A single institution case series in Indonesia

Abstract

Background: Posttraumatic epilepsy (PTE) is a debilitating sequelae following traumatic brain injury (TBI). Risk of developing PTE is higher in the first 6 months following head trauma and remains increased for 10 years. Many cases of PTE developed into drug-resistant epilepsy in which need surgical treatment.

Case description: Fourteen patients were identified from 1998 until 2021. Mean age at onset was 21.00 ± 6.13 years, mean age of surgery was 29.50 ± 6.83 years. All patients had partial complex seizure with more than half of cases (n = 10, 71.4%) reported with focal impaired awareness seizure and focal to bilateral tonic-clonic type of seizure which were observed in the remained cases (n = 4, 28.6%). Abnormal magnetic resonance imaging findings were observed in 12 patients: mesial temporal sclerosis (n = 7), encephalomalacia (n = 4), brain atrophy (n = 4), and focal cortical dysplasia (n = 2). More than half of cases presented with mesial temporal lobe epilepsy despite site and type of brain injury. Most patients who undergone epileptogenic focus resection were free of seizure, but two patients remained to have seizure with worthwhile improvement.

Conclusion: This study emphasizes the clinical characteristic of PTE cases in our center in Indonesia. While encephalomalacia is a typical finding following TBI and often responsible for epilepsy, electroencephalogram recording remains critical in determining epileptic focus. Most of PTE patients presented with temporal lobe epilepsy had excellent outcomes after surgical resection of epileptogenic focus.

Keywords: Epilepsy; Posttraumatic epilepsy; Seizure; Temporal lobe epilepsy; Traumatic brain injury.

Figure 1:

Case 1: (a) and (b) coronal fluid attenuated inversion recovery (FLAIR) revealed bilateral frontal encephalomalacia (yellow arrow) and left mesial temporal sclerosis (white arrowhead).