Study on the Prognosis According to Clinical Patterns and Laboratory Findings in Children with Acute Encephalopathy

Kim, Jeong Mee; Choi, Jae Hyung; Yum, Myung Kul; Kim, Nam Soo; Seol, In Joon

Abstract

PURPOSE
Acute encephalopathy is defined as diffuse interference of brain functions due to neuronal dysfunction by generalized or multifocal insults. In this study, we investigated the relationship between the prognosis and other factors such as clinical patterns, laboratory findings, electroencephalographic and radiologic findings in children with acute encephalopahty.
METHODS
We carried out a retrospective review on the medical records of 43 patients who were initially diagnosed as encephalopathy from January 1995 to June 2004. We excluded the patients diagnosed as mumps meningitis, Reye syndome and neonatal hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy.
RESULTS
1) The morality rate was 50% in the patients below 1 year old at the admission, but all the patients above 10 years old were survived. 2) The morality rate was 40% in the patients with alert mental status at the admission and one patient with comatous mental status died. 3) The morality rate of the patients without seizures at the admission(35.7%) was higher than that of the patients with seizures(10.3%). But there was no statistical significance. 4) In the patients with abnormal liver function tests, the mortality rate(40%) was singnificantly higher than that of the patients with normal liver functions(7.1%, P value <0.05) 5) Only 5 patients(20%) among 25 patients who took both EEG's and imaging studies were taken showed abnormalities at the same locations in both studies. But there was no significant relationship between the mortality rate and EEG and the radiologic findings.
CONCLUSION
In this study, we could not find out the statistically significant relationship between the prognosis and other factors such as age, consciousness levels, the presence of seizures at the admission, and electroencephalographic and radiologic abnormalities. But the patients with abnormal liver functions at the admission showed statistically significant higher mortality rates than patients with normal liver function.