Speech and Language Disorders After Rolandic Epilepsy in Children

Background: Among the types of childhood epilepsy, Rolandic epilepsy is a benign disorder with very good prognosis that accounts for 15% of childhood epilepsy. The most common age for Rolandic epilepsy is 6 to 10 years, usually at bedtime. Symptoms of Rolandic epilepsy included tonic and colonic facial muscular contractions, burning sensation, itching, numbness, loss of consciousness, difficulty speaking, and salivation from the mouth due to the lack of facial muscle control. One of the most common problems that occur after childhood epilepsy is speech and language disorders. Therefore, the purpose of the present study is to review speech and language problems after Rolandic epilepsy in children. Methods: In this review, studies were conducted from 2011 to 2019 from PubMed, Science Direct, Google Scholar databases were investigated using Epilepsy, Rolondic epilepsy, Seizure, Speech and Language Disorder, Children and Child key words. Studies that examined the relationship between speech and language disorders and benign Rolandic epilepsy were included in the present study. Findings: Of the 23 articles, 7 related articles, all of which were available in full text and were in English language, were evaluated. There was a large difference between the articles in terms of the indices studied, sample number, method of implementation, and so on. A review of studies showed that seizure freedom and prolonged life without seizure was associated with higher scores on all language tasks during the follow-up period after epilepsy. Higher age at the onset of epilepsy, higher IQ, and higher baseline scores were associated with higher follow-up scores across all language tasks. Chronic seizure-induced brain damage is associated with decreased language skills in affected children and limits the intra-syllabic, syllabic, and phonemic levels. There are also deficits in the cognitive, phonological, and verbal working memory of these children. Changes in semantic skills were also the most common problem in the reviewed studies, and these children also exhibited morpho-syntactic language disorders. Children with Rolandic epilepsy also have difficulty understanding sentences and show deficits in short-term auditory memory and central auditory processing that can be effective in language deficits in these children.Conclusion: The results of the reviewed studies indicate a high likelihood of occurrence of speech and language disorders in children with benign Rolandic epilepsy. However, longitudinal studies with long-term follow-up are needed to better comment in this regard. However, children with benign epilepsy appear to need speech therapy services to assess and treat speech and language disorders in addition to receiving treatment to manage their epilepsy.

Keywords:

Speech and Language Disorders , Seizure , Rolandic Epilepsy , Children