Epilepsy Risk Is Elevated for More Than 10 Years After Head Trauma in Children

Risk for new-onset epilepsy is elevated after traumatic brain injury, but for how long? Using public databases, researchers studied a cohort of 1.6 million people who were born in Denmark between 1977 and 2002. During that period, nearly 79,000 of them incurred traumatic brain injuries, and about 17,000 developed epilepsy; traumatic brain injury preceded epilepsy in 1017 people.

Compared with baseline risk (no brain injury), risk for new-onset epilepsy was elevated twofold after mild brain injury (concussion) and sevenfold after severe brain injury (contusion or intracranial hemorrhage). Risk was greatest in the first 6 months after mild (relative risk, 5.5) or severe (RR, 19.6) brain injury and remained elevated more than 10 years later (RR…