The Clinical Characteristics Of Children With Hospitalized For Febrile Seizures

Febrile seizures are seizures that occur in febrile children between the ages of 6and 60 months who do not have an intracranial infection, or history of afebrile seizures. In this study, the children’s demographic and clinical characteristics who had hospitalized for febrile seizures in Antalya Education and Research Hospital (AEAH) were reviewed. 56 children’s demographic and clinical characteristics who had hospitalized for febrile seizures between September 2011- January 2012 in AEAH were analysed retrospectively. Analyses were performed using SPSS 16.0 version. 23 patients (41.1%) were male, 33 (58.9%) were female , mean age was 26.8 months, mean duration of hospitalized days were 3.5 days. Fever source was upper respiratory tract infection in 44 (78.6%) patients, lower respiratory tract infection in 6 (10.7%), acute otitis media in 2 (3.6%), urinary tract infection in 1 (1.8%), acute gastroenteritis in 1 (1.8%), hand–foot-mouth disease in 1 (1.8%), roseola infantum in 1 (1.8%) patient. Lumbar punction was done in 2 (3.6%) patients, one of them had aseptic menengitis and other had normally cerebrospinal fluid findings. 34 (60.7%) patients had first attack, 12 (21.4%) had second, 5 (8.9%) had third and 5 (8.9%) had more than three attacks. 4 (7.1%) patient’s seizures who had first febrile attack occured more than once in a 24 hour period. 4 (7.1%) patients had complex febrile seizures, 1 (1.8%) patient had febrile status epilepticus. These results suggest that most febrile seizures are simple, good prognosis and mostly causes of fever is upper respiratory tract infection.