EARLY INFANTILE EPILEPTIC ENCEPHALOPATHY WITH ANOXO-ISCHEMIC ETIOLOGY AT UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL CAMPUS OF LOME (TOGO)

Early Infantile Epileptic Encephalopathy (EIEE) or Ohtahara syndrome is a rare form of neonatal encephalopathy. It presents particular electro-clinical, therapeutic and outcome features. Its etiologies are essentially structural and more malformative than anoxo-ischemic for most of the cases which are described in literature. We report the first two cases of EIEE with anoxo-ischemic etiology, which were confirmed by CT-scan and followed up in the department of neurology since 2 and 5 months old, respectively. Patients had a neonatal cerebral pain history and, up to one-year-old, presented a severe outcome which was characterized by the persistence of tonic spasms in extension (more than 20 seizures per day) and psychomotor development delay, despite taking phenobarbital, carbamazepine or sodium valproate and methylprednisone. At eight months and one year old, the electroencephalogram of sleep presented showed suppression-burst pattern, while that of awakening was transformed into hypsarrhythmia (West's syndrome).