Pediatria pre prax 4/2009

Non-epileptic seizures in children

Authors present the most common forms of non-epileptic seizures in children that mimic epileptic seizure due to wide spectrum of symptoms. There are described in dependency to age tremor, sleep myoclonus, startle and dystonic reaction in newborns, affective breath-holding spells and benign paroxysmal vertigo in infants, syncopes, psychogenic seizures and parasomnias in school children and adolescents. Understanding of non-epileptic seizures symptoms is a key condition for accurate differential diagnosis and for distinguishing of them from the prognostic worse epileptic seizures.

Keywords: non-epileptic seizures, differential diagnosis, affective breath-holding spells, parasomnias.