Diagnostic dilemma: Sturge-Weber syndrome, without facial nevus

Sturge-Weber syndrome (SWS), a rare sporadic neurocutaneous disease, is characterized by a congenital unilateral port-wine nevus affecting the area innervated by V1, ipsilateral leptomeningeal angiomatosis, and calcification in the occipital or frontoparietal region and glaucoma/vascular eye abnormality. Three types of SWS have been described in literature: Type I (classic) demonstrates facial and leptomeningeal angioma, often with glaucoma; type I has facial angioma and glaucoma, with no evidence of intracranial lesions; and type III (rarest) presents with only leptomeningeal angioma. Only a few cases of type III SWS have been reported. Here, we report a case of a seven-year-old boy with focal complex partial seizure, who was diagnosed with SWS without facial nevus. Recognition of this type of SWS is important, as our patient had been misdiagnosed and received inappropriate antiepileptic drugs for six years. We suggest that in the appropriate clinical scenario, the diagnosis of SWS without facial nevus should be considered before labelling idiopathic or cryptogenic localization-related epilepsy, and gadolinium-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) should be done in clinically suspicious cases of SWS, without facial nevus.