Study Of Risk Factors For Recurrent Febrile Seizures.

Background: Febrile seizures are the most common type of childhood seizures occurring between 6months to 60 months of age in a febrile child without the evidence of infection of central nervous system, trauma or metabolic disturbances. They are benign conditions with good prognosis and around 1/3rd of the cases will have recurrences. There are certain risk factors contributing to the recurrence of febrile seizures. Objective: The aim of the present study was to find the risk factors associated with recurrence of febrile convulsions. Methods: This prospective observational study was done on 121 children from December 2018 to October 2019, admitted to Karnataka institute of medical sciences, Hubballi with febrile seizures and were followed up over 1 year period. Of these 32 children were diagnosed to have recurrence of febrile seizures. History regarding the risk factors was taken in each case along with examination and necessary investigations and data was analysed using mean + standard deviation (x + sd), chi square test and regression analysis and SPSS 21 Results: Among 121 children, 32 children (26.4%) had experienced recurrent febrile seizure. Mean age of recurrent febrile convulsion was 17 +/- 2.8 months. 31.2% of the children had their first episode of febrile seizure before 1 year of life. Male children (78.1%) are more commonly affected with recurrence. 31.2% of the children with recurrence had significant family history of febrile seizure as compared to 10.1% in those without recurrence. Conclusions: These findings revealed that age less than 1 year, male gender, duration of fever less than 1 hour prior to seizure, family history of febrile seizure, complex febrile seizures, prolonged seizure duration ( > 15 minutes), are risk factors for recurrence of febrile seizure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]