AGE-RELATED ASPECTS OF COMORBIDITY AND MEDICAL REHABILITATION IN CHILDREN WITH EPILEPSY

Topicality. Further evidential studies are needed to explore medical rehabilitation of patients with epilepsy, its consequences and comorbid disorders during existing seizures as well as the issues of its comprehensive evaluation. Purpose of the work. To determine the frequency and structure of comorbid disorders in children of different age groups during the onset of epilepsy before prescribing anticonvulsant therapy as well as to estimate effectiveness of medical rehabilitation interventions performed differentially according to the unified evaluation of epilepsy severity. Material and methods. We performed a prospective cohort study of 447 children with epilepsy aged from 0 to 17 years before prescribing them anticonvulsant therapy. The frequency of age-related psychic, neurologic and somatic accompanying disorders was studied. Two groups of children who were matched by the main criteria were formed: those who received complex medical rehabilitation (n=233) – the main group, and those who did not (n=214) – the control group. Results. Psychic disorders at the onset of epilepsy were found in 30.6% of cases with the highest frequency in children less than 1 year of age (50.8%), pFisher