Typical absences in a patient with serious head injury

Introduction. Head injury is the commonest cause of symptomatic or secondary epilepsy and one of its most serious sequelas. Typical absence seizures ale well defined clinically and electroencephalographically and are seen in age-related idiopathic epilepsies. There are very few descriptions of seizures of typical absences that were symptomatic of tumors or other structural lesions. Clinical case. We describe the case of a nine year old boy who had had a severe head injury at the age of four years. when he was seven yeats old he started to have seizures with all the clinical and electroencephalographic features of typical absences. Conclusions. In this case, taking the age of the patient into account the APF, APP, electroclinical characteristics of the seizures, neurological and clinical condition, the problem was to decide whether the seizures were idiopathic or symptomatic of a cerebral lesion. This was important for treatment and prognosis. The answer could only be obtained by follow up and assessment of the response to specific treatment for petit mal [REV NEUROL 1999; 28: 240-2].