Neurological disorders in children and adolescents.

OBJECTIVE

To ascertain the prevalence of active epilepsy, febrile seizures (FS), cerebral palsy (CP) and tic disorders (TD) in aged 19 years or less.

METHODS

This was a cross-sectional observational study conducted as a two-stage door-to-door survey of a stratified randomly selected population in 2003-04. Trained field workers screened the population followed by case examination by the field neurologist.

RESULTS

A total of 16979 (male 8898, female 8081) subjects aged

CONCLUSIONS

The prevalence of CP and TD is lower than reported from western countries. CP prevalence is also comparatively lower than in many community studies from India. Compared to western nations, higher proportion of FS cases develops epilepsy. A third of the CP cases have seizures which is higher than in many Indian studies. Birth anoxia is a common cause of CP and educational underachievement is frequent.