Assessment of school performance among children with Epilepsy Khartoum, Sudan 2022: Thesis submitted for partial fulfilment of MBBS

Background: Epilepsy is a common disease among children and its impact on school and social life have ever been underestimated and stigmatized. Objectives:The aim of this study is to assess the school performance among children with epilepsy and to measure the association between school performance and some children characteristics (age, gender, type and severity of epilepsy). Patients and Methods:This study was a cross-sectional hospital-based, it was conducted at Fath Al Rhman outpatient referral clinic, pediatrics' neurology unit involving 97 children aged between (6-18) diagnosed with primary epilepsy.Results: Our results showed that the majority were less than 15 years with slight male predominance at 55%, the majority had generalized epilepsy and mostly was well controlled.furthermore, we found that epilepsy significantly impacted patients in their school performance where around third of our participant (30.9%) have poor grades and (32%) have average grades.We found that there is a high-rate of school absenteeism with only (21%) attending regularly.Regarding cognitive function the majority of our participant (69%) recorded attention problems and (63%) having writing problems, where (62%) have memory problems and only (39%) have language problems.Concerning the social life, the majority (61%) showed good participation in school activities and sports and major part of the participants (70%) play outside freely and (87%) are able to form friendship normally.The result revealed the impact of epilepsy in mood and behavior is significant with (51%) recorded aggressive behavior.Conclusions: we concluded that the impact of epilepsy on the school and social life of affected children is quite significant.