INFLUENCE OF MATERNAL EPILEPSY ON PRE-, PERI AND NEONATAL COMPLICATIONS – POPULATION BASED STUDY

Objectives: Pregnancies in women with epilepsy need careful management by both neurological and obstetric teams. For this reason the control study was performed to asses whether the epileptic mothers have a higher probability of pregnancy risk factors, such as: vaginal bleeding, preeclampsia, spontaneous abortion, meconium stained amniotic fluid ant to review the neurological condition of newborns.

Methods: A total of n=976 mothers who gave the birth at Obstetrics Department during one year were analysed, 0.92% were epileptic, this means that one out of 160 womaen suffered from epilepsy.

Results: All of epileptic deliveries were terminated by delivery through natural passages. In relation to epileptic mother all of the antropometric measurements did not differ significantly. Through the epileptic mothers: there was high rate of first semester vaginal bleeding (p,0.001), higher rate of preclampsia (p,0.05). Incidents of pathological conditions in newborns oedema and heart hypertrophy occurred more often (p,0.005). There were no differences in neurological status: muscle tension, reflexes, muscle strength and presence of neonatal convulsions. Conclusion: The study indicated that the rate of complications of pregnancy in mothers with epilepsy such as: vaginal bleeding, eclampsia is significantly increased in comparison with non-epileptic mothers. Epilepsy in mothers did not correlate with the prematurity of pregnancy. There was no association between epilepsy in mothers and the presence of meconium- stained fluid. None of the anthropometric measurements was significantly different between the epileptic mother's infants and control group. There was strong correlation between epilepsy and heart hypertrophy. There were no differences in neurological stsus of both groups of children.