Clinical characterization of gastroenteritis-related seizures in children: impact of fever and serum sodium levels

Gastroenteritis-related seizures have increasingly gained attention in recent years. Most cases follow a brief, benign course with very few episodes of seizure recurrence and without development of epilepsy. Published reports usually do not make a distinction between febrile and afebrile patients, and most authors include only nonfebrile convulsions in their reported series. This study evaluated the impact of fever in children presenting with seizures during a mild gastroenteritis episode and found that the presence or absence of fever did not affect seizure characteristics or duration. However, mild hyponatremia affected some seizure features, particularly seizure duration, as hyponatremic children sustained more prolonged seizures than patients with normal serum sodium levels, irrespective of body temperature.