Head trauma and epilepsy

Abstract

Summary Posttraumatic epilepsy (PTE) is defined as a recurrent seizure disorder due to injury to the brain following head trauma. Traumatic brain injury (TBI) accounts for 20% of symptomatic epilepsy in the general population and 5% of all epilepsy. Prevention or suppression of the development of PTE is a major unmet challenge in medicine. For an expanded treatment of this topic see Jasper’s Basic Mechanisms of the Epilepsies, Fourth Edition (Noebels JL, Avoli M, Rogawski MA, Olsen RW, Delgado‐Escueta AV, eds) published by Oxford University Press (available on the National Library of Medicine Bookshelf [NCBI] at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books ).