Benign infantile seizures (a French collaborative study).

Background. - Benign infantile non febrile seizures are not well known, leading us to study their clinical and EEG characteristics. Methods. - Between 1981 and 1994, we assembled 34 patients with the following inclusion criteria; non febrile seizures between 1 month and 2 years of age, normal personal history, no abnormality on clinical, biological and radiological investigations, normal developmental outcome with a least 1 year follow-up. Results. - These 34 patients were recognized as 14 familial cases (identical seizures affecting parents) and 11 non familial cases. The other nine cases had different or undefined epilepsy in the family. The clinical and EEG characteristics were the same; at the mean age of 6 months, brief partial seizures (often secondarily or apparently generalized) occurring in a cluster of two to 12 episodes a day for mean duration of 2.5 days with ictal EEG showing focal discharge, often slow waves or focal spikes on post-ictal tracing and normal interictal EEG. Conclusion. - The clinical and EEG characteristics are important in order to recognize this type of infantile convulsions (familial or not familial), which have a good prognosis and need no aggressive treatment. (C) 1999 Elsevier, Paris.