Treatment of preterm infants with West syndrome: differences due to etiology
Pediatrics International, 08/17/2012
Mure T et al. – Preterm West syndrome (WS) patients responded well to treatment. Distinguishing WS patients on the basis of different etiologies is important for evaluating the effectiveness of treatments.
Methods- Medical records of 53 patients with WS, treated at five institutions between 2005 and 2009, were reviewed retrospectively.
- Patients were divided into six groups based on the time of their brain insult, and evaluated for short-term outcomes using oral antiepileptic agents and synthetic adrenocorticotropic hormone.
- Patients numbering 15, 6, 14, 2, 4, and 12 were placed into prenatal, term, preterm, postnatal, other, and no identified etiology groups respectively.
- The average age of onset in the term group was 3.3 ± 1.0 months, significantly earlier than for all other groups (p < 0.05). All patients in the term group had experienced seizures before the onset of WS.
- Only patients in the preterm group had experienced neonatal seizures and exhibited better responses to treatment, especially oral medication, compared with those in the prenatal and term groups.
- The percentage of cases involving relapse of seizures in the preterm group (14%) was significantly lower than that in the prenatal group.
