Drop attacks: an ominous change in the evolution of partial epilepsy
Pazzaglia, P.; D'Alessandro, R.; Ambrosetto, G.; Lugaresi, E.
Neurology 35(12): 1725-1730
1985
ISSN/ISBN: 0028-3878 PMID: 4069364 Document Number: 264772
We studied 16 patients with partial epilepsy and drop attacks. The drop attacks appeared 1 to 29 years after onset of epilepsy: 15 patients had these attacks weekly or daily, despite therapy. After the appearance of drop attacks, 6 patients had severe mental disorders, and social life was disrupted in 13. There was a high rate of adversive seizures, atypical absences, and diffuse spike-wave discharges in the EEG, electroclinical features that suggest a frontal origin of epilepsy. Drop attacks are ominous because they occur so frequently, resist therapy, are physically dangerous, and portend personality change.