Relación entre psicopatología y epilepsia en la infancia: a propósito de un caso de esclerosis mesial temporal

Introduction

The prevalence of psychiatric disorders is higher in people with epilepsy than in the general population, especially affective disorders, anxiety, and psychosis.

Case report

A ten-year-old male with behavioural disorder and disorganization, admitted to the psychiatric ward for differential diagnosis. During his stay, he had an episode of vomiting followed by loss of consciousness. The EEG showed normal background activity with right-sided fronto-temporal dysfunction signs. The MRI featured loss of volume of the right hippocampal gyrus. Other diagnostic tests showed no alterations. Treatment with lacosamide was introduced. This was followed by clinical improvement, and a diagnosis of behavioural disorder due to mesial temporal sclerosis was established.

Discussion

Temporal epilepsy due to hippocampal sclerosis is one of the most common causes of secondary generalised seizures, and is associated with deficits in emotion processing and facial emotion recognition, semantic and episodic memory, and executive and visual-motor dysfunction.