Abstract
We report two girls who had intractable recurrent febrile convulsions with fatal outcome. They had no family history of convulsions. Their first febrile convulsion developed at 6 months of age, recurred frequently and was resistant against anticonvulsants. At 10 years of age, they both died unexpectedly of status epileptics. The total frequency of febrile convulsions were 24 and 56 times respectively. EEG during the clinical course showed few epileptic discharges. Blood, liquor and neuroimaging examinations were normal.
Of the 99 patients with common recurrent febrile convulsions studied, boys accounted for 67.7% and 40.4% of them had a family history of convulsions. The cumulative frequency of convulsions at 3 years of age was 5.6±3.1 times (mean±SD). Convulsions ended earlier in the cases with the first febrile convulsion younger than one year or girls.
When girls younger than one year of age develop first febrile convulsion, have repeated febrile seizures more than 12 times up to 3 years of age despite anticonvulsive therapy and show few epileptic discharges on EEG, febrile convulsions with poor prognosis should be guarded.
