소아정신과에 내원한 경련성질환 아동 및 청소년에 관한 연구

A Study On the Convulsive Disordered Children and Adolescents Among the Child Psychiatry Outpatients

114 subjects(children and adolescents) with convulsive disorder were studied retrospectively, based on their medical records. They constituted 17. 5% of the total child psychiatry outpatients seen for 5 years and 7 months. Besides the seizure attacks, various kinds of conduct, emotional, social and learning disturbances were reported, however, the treatment done in the outpatient clinic was exclusively drug therapyoriented. In anticonvulsant drug therapy, more than two kinds of anticonvulsants were prescribed in 62. of the study subjects. Especially in children and adolescents, it may affect the ongoing normal developmental processes adversely. While on treatment with anticonvulsants, 19subjects were reported to develop some hyperkin- etic behavior, personality change, destructive behavior and memory impairment. In most cases, it was estimated to be the effect of phenobarbital and/or primidone commonly administered to them. Antipsychotic drugs were prescribed to some of them to control the conduct problems but it is somewhat undesirable due to the antipsychotics potential action to lower the seizure threshold and to cause tardive dyskinesia if used on a long term basis. Rather, it is recommended that the suspected anticonvulsant be substituted. Convulsive disorders in children or adolescents should be regarded as a developmental crisis’and they should be treated comprehensively, not in terms of a simple neurological disorder. Normal developmental progress should be fully encouraged