Benign partial epilepsy in infancy and early childhood with vertex spikes and waves during sleep: a new epileptic form

International epilepsy classification includes different epileptic syndrome s with favourable outcomes in paediatric age, both partial and generalised. This is true in childhood while no partial benign forms are accepted in in fancy. In 1987, Watanabe first described a new entity and he defined it as 'benign complex partial epilepsies in infancy'. In 1992, Vigevano referred similar but familial cases whose seizures had secondary generalisation. Bot h these forms had no interictal EEG abnormalities neither awake nor during sleep. This article presents a survey of 12 cases of partial epilepsy with favourable outcome differing from Watanabe and Vigevano's cases, both for t he presence of interictal EEG abnormalities only during sleep and for seizu re picture. All our patients are neurologically and neuroradiologically nor mal. Psychomotor development is unremarkable. Age onset range is 13-30 mont hs. All cases present characteristic spikes and waves during slow-sleep in vertex cerebral areas. Awake EEG is always normal, at follow-up too. Our ca ses have such homogeneous electroclinical features as to hypothesise a new partial idiopathic epileptic syndrome with favourable outcome in infancy an d early childhood. We propose to define it as 'benign partial epilepsy in i nfancy and early childhood with vertex spikes and waves' (BVSE). (C) 2000 E lsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.