Paroxysmal Visual Disturbances of Epileptic Origin and Occipital Epilepsy in Children

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Abstract
A special form of partial occipital epilepsy clinically resembling migraine and possibly related to the benign focal epilepsies of childhood has recently attracted attention but its existence is still debated. To approach this problem, in a group of 195 children with idiopathic partial or generalized epilepsy, those who had visual complaints as part of their seizures (12 children) and those who also had migraine (4 children) were studied. The clinical and EEG features of these children were analyzed together with those of another group of 30 children diagnosed as migraine accompanied in which an EEG had been obtained (3/30, i.e., 10% had paroxysmal spike-waves: 1 centrotemporal focus, 2 generalized spike-waves). One child with the type of epilepsy described by Gastaut (1982) as partial benign occipital epilepsy (phosphenes, moving lights, headaches and occipital high voltage biphasic spike-waves blocked by eye opening on the EEG) was found in the epileptic group whereas the other children of this group, including those with associated migraine, had other types of epilepsy. This new type of epileptic syndrome can be distinguished from symptomatically resembling entities but its place needs to be further defined.