Study of clinical statistics on epilepsy

With 989 cases of epilepsy handled during a period of 9 years from April 1950 to March 1959 as the subjects of investigation, the author made an observation of clinical statistics on recent cases of epilepsy. The author roughly divided the type of epileptic seizures into three groups, namely grand mal, petit mal and psycho-motor and further dividing the cases by number of type of seizure, looked into the rate of appearance of seizures. Cases of one type alone were the most frequent with 81.9% and in the seizure by age, the 0-9 age group was 42.7%, the 10-19 age group was 34.0% and there was a difference of 5 years or so between the age at the time of developing the fit and that at the time of consulting a physician. Aura was observed in 45.0% of the cases and as the anamnesis prior to the incidence of epilepsy, head injury accounted for 17.6% as the inciting cause of the attacks, mental and physical fatigue took the largest number of cases. As electroencephalographic findings at the time of closure of eyes or at the time of mental rest, 58.4% of the cases did not show any change, 29.1% exhibited abnormal findings and 12.5% were doubtful, but the tracing of the cases was made with the activation of abnormal brain waves. In regard to pneumo-encephalographic findings, abnormal ones were noted in 34.0% of the cases of genuine or symptomatic epilepsy. Prognosis was checked on the patients who spent more than one year after discharge from hospital and in 100 of them from whom answers were received, 21 did not display paroxysm through drug administration, whereas 11 produced the same result without medication.