What is the point of specifying Panayiotopoulos syndrome from a practical point of view?

摘要

What is the point of defining a specific epilepsy syndrome in clinical practice? Definition of a specific epilepsy syndrome could be judged redundant, unless it helps in clinical management, prediction of prognosis or understanding of its underlying pathophysiology.In this issue, Michael et al. have reviewed the literature systematically and summarized difference in electro-clinical features between Panayiotopoulos syndrome and childhood occipital epilepsy of Gastaut type. It is emphasized chat Panayiotopoulos syndrome should be differentiated from childhood occipital epilepsy of Gas-taut type and acute non-epileptic disorders [1]. Especially, the table summarizing the data of 550 patients with Panayiotopoulos syndrome derived from seven large studies is very useful for readers to conceptualize the electroclinical features of Panayiotopoulos syndrome. The take-home messages from this article can be summarized as follows.