الفهرس 
CONTENTSOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Epilepsy is a highly prevalence disease, affecting 0.5-1.5% of the world population. There are several recommended medications with demonstrated clinical efficacy from which to choose. Selection of a specific medication is often based upon clinical experience. Antiepileptic drugs have common side effects of decreasing neuronal excitability, however, are slowed motor and psychomotor speed, poor attention and mild memory impairment. Children with epilepsy, as a group, experience a disproportionate degree of academic underachievement as compared with children without epilepsy. Previous studies have documented poor academic progress despite adequate intellectual ability in many children with epilepsy many factors have been considered as possible causes of these learning disabilities, including seizures themselves, antiepileptic, drug side effects, underlying brain lesion, preexisting learning disabilities, specific attentional and memory deficits and psychological adjustment factors. Our study aims to assess the impact of epilepsy on Neurocognitive functions in a group of school children. This study was held over the period from May 2011 till November 2011. Our sample was collected from children suffering from idiopathic epilepsy and attending hospitals of health insurance in Dakahlia governorate to receive treatment. Our study group including 200 children between age of 6-14 they are suffering from idiopathic epilepsy with no Neurodevelopmental problems or organic brain lesion. These children were controlled and seizure free for about 3 months before the study. This study group was compared to 210 healthy siblings matched for gender and age on measures of intellectual functioning Wechsler intelligence scale for children third edition (WISC-III). In our study, there is significant decrease of full scale Wechsler IQ score in epileptic group than control group. Also the longer the duration of treatment the more worse the effect on the neurocognitive functions. The group that received AED for 2-4 years are less affected than who received AED for 5-9 years. The gender plays an important risk factor for deterioration of Neurocognitive functions in epileptic children as there is significant differences in both verbal and performance IQ scores between girls and boys, with girls do worse than boys in all IQ parameters. Also Neurocognitive indices as working memory index, perceptual resoning index and verbal comprehension index are markedly impaired in our study group.