Rolandic epilepsy: an uncommon presentation with leg motor seizures

Abstract

Rolandic epilepsy (RE) is the most common and one of the most benign epileptic syndromes of childhood. It is typically characterized by sleep-related orofacial seizures, of brief duration, of variable frequency, in otherwise healthy children. Electroencephalography (EEG) shows typical centrotemporal spike and spike-and-wave complexes, often bilateral and asynchronous, activated by sleep. Therapy is often unnecessary and seizures spontaneously end at puberty. Apart from typical orofacial localization, arm or more diffuse clonic jerks are frequently described by parents. More rare and probably underestimated are sensorimotor seizure localized to one leg. When such seizures represent the only type of seizures in RE, the exact recognition of this benign epileptic syndrome appears difficult, leading to unnecessary investigation and therapy. We describe six children, among 230 with RE, who presented leg sensorimotor seizures as the mainly type of ictal manifestations.