Objectives:

Pneumonia cases that first started in Wuhan were defined as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 by The World Health Organization in January 2020. Neurological complications such as epileptic seizures may occur during COVID-19 infection. These seizures may occur for the first time or in the form of acute seizures that can be observed in epilepsy patients during the course of the disease.

Methods:

Demographic data of the patients, presence of the diagnosis of epilepsy disease, accompanying diseases, number of seizures during hospitalization, follow-up to the intensive care unit, COVID-19 clinical day during seizures, presence of disease that can be detected in the etiology of epilepsy, and discharge status were examined in this retrospectively planned study.

Results:

Seizure rate was determined to be 0.57% in these patients. 18 (58.1%) patients did not have a history of epilepsy, whereas 13 (41.9%) patients had a history of epilepsy. It was found that mortality was higher in the first seizures; there was no difference between age, gender, COVID-19 clinical day, presence of hospitalization in the intensive care unit, and Modified Charlson Comorbidity Index when the data of patients with and without epilepsy were compared.

Conclusion:

COVID-19 infection can increase the likelihood of seizures like other viral infections, but we do not have strong data that it can trigger seizures in different ways compared to other viral agents with all the data.

Keywords: COVID-19, epilepsy, modified charlson comorbidity index score