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Prognosis of Epilepsy: The Second Interim Report of A Multi‐Institutional Study in Japan
Author(s) -
Okuma Teruo,
Kumashiro Hisashi
Publication year - 1978
Publication title -
psychiatry and clinical neurosciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.609
H-Index - 74
eISSN - 1440-1819
pISSN - 1323-1316
DOI - 10.1111/j.1440-1819.1978.tb02811.x
Subject(s) - interim , epilepsy , medicine , psychiatry , political science , law
SUMMARY1 This is the second interim report of the multi‐institutional study on the long‐term prognosis of epilepsy started in 1975 in Japan. The number of institutions joining the investigation increased from 10 to 16 (11 psychiatric, three pediatric and two neurosurgical clinics) during the second year of the study. The outcome of epileptic seizures and EEG findings 10 years after the onset (10‐year‐outcome study, subjects: onset of illness later than 1959, first visit between 1964 and 19661, five years after the onset (5‐year‐outcome study, subjects: onset later than 1964, first visit between 1969 and 1971) were investigated in September 1976. 2 The rate of successful follow‐ups including those by means of inquiry by mail or telephone ranged from 15.4% to 45.8% in the adult 10‐year‐outcome study (483 cases in total), 13.6% to 53.376 in the adult 5‐year‐outcome study (287 cases), and 46.0% to 70.5% in the child 5‐year‐outcome study (747 cases). 3 In the adult 10‐year‐outcome study, the seizures disappeared in 73% of the cases with absence seizures, 67% of generalized tonic‐clonic seizures, 69% of partial seizures with elementary motor symptoms and 3576 of partial seizures with secondarily generalized seizures. In the partial seizures with complex symptomatology, the seizures disappeared in 57% of psychomotor seizures, but only in 33% of psychomotor cases with secondarily generalized convulsive seizures. The outcome of seizures was almost similar in the adult 5‐year‐outcome study as in the 10‐year‐outcome study. In the child cases, the rate of complete remission was higher than that of adult cases in almost all types of seizures. 4 As for the clinico‐electroencephalographic correlations, about half of the adult and approximately 70% of the child cases showed a parallel change in clinical seizure frequency and EEG pictures. In most of the non‐parallel cases, aggravation of EEG abnormalities was observed despite clinical improvement.