Head trauma and post traumatic epilepsy – a radiological study

Author: 
Dr. R.P Singhal, Dr. Monica Jain, Dr. Abhishek, Dr. Bhushan Nath Lakhar and Dr. Satish Jain

Introduction: India went through a phase of massive urbanization, industrialization and motorization. In relation to motorization one of the problems is head injury. Imaging tests help in determining the diagnosis and prognosis of a traumatic brain injury patient. One of the common sequelae of head trauma is seizures. About 25% of patients with brain contusions or hematomas and about 50% of patients with penetrating head injuries will develop seizures. These seizures occur within first 24 hours of head injury. Material, Method and Observation: An attempt is being made to correlate the CT appearances with epilepsy. We study about 1000 cases of head injury and separate the cases of post traumatic epilepsy for further study. This study was a prospective hospital based study and was carried out from August 2009 to July 2011. Result and conclusion: Seizure is a known complication in patients of head injury with incidence of seizure in our series was7% & most common clinical presentation in post traumatic seizure patients is headache which was seen in our series. Plain X- ray had a limited role in evaluation of post traumatic head injury because negative or positive plain X-ray needs further investigation in the form of CT. CT is the sensitive imaging modality to pick up the injuries of skull bones, subdural and epidural hematomas and contusions.MRI is the modality of choice for evaluation of post traumatic epilepsy because it can reveal all the lesions detected on CT in addition to diffuse axonal injury and gliosis. In our series, because of financial constraints, we could do MRI in a limited number of cases.

Paper No: 
163