Abstracts

Rationale: No previous epidemiological studies of pediatric epilepsy have directly compared hospital (HB) and population- based (PB) series. To compare two series of Cuban patients with HB and PB with emphasis on etiology and epilepsy severity. Methods: The PB was composed of 112 cases of the municipalities Plaza, Chambas and the town of Cojimar ascertained by a child neurologist. The HB cohort included 301 consecutive patients admitted to the Neuropaediatric Service of the Institute of Neurology from 2010 to 2014. Data was obtained from the patient's medical record and included sex, age at study admission and epilepsy onset, seizure types, seizure severity, type of epilepsy based on localization and etiology. Results: Age of onset and age of study admission and gender were similar in the two series. Focal epilepsies predominated in both groups (HB 74.4% and PB 79.5%). In the PB group, more patients were seizure free in the last 12 months (PB 58.9% vs. HB 35.9%) (c2 = 20.6, p = 0.00003), and more cases had idiopathic etiology (PB 29.5% vs. HB 13.6%) (c2 = 16.1, p = 0.0003). Conclusions: In this unique study from a single country (Cuba) children from the PB group had a much better prognosis with lower seizure severity and a higher frequency of idiopathic epilepsies than those from the HB group. It is likely that in most other countries the nature of case ascertainment will have a major impact on prognosis. Funding: none