Study of Language Disorders in Children with Epilepsy

Background: One of the most important indicators of children development is the acquisition of language skills that is closely related to the communication components. Unfortunately, language skills can be affected by a variety of diseases, including epilepsy, cerebral palsy, head trauma, mental retardation, autism, and so on. Since epilepsy is the most common chronic disease of the nervous system in childhood, accurate identification of damaged skills is necessary for early identification and treatment. Since language is the basis of verbal communication, this study aimed to investigate the language skills of children with epilepsy in order to help in drawing a language profile and increase awareness of these disorders. Methods: For this purpose, scientific databases such as Science Direct, PubMed, Scopus and SID were reviewed to identify articles between 2000 and 2019 and that related to epilepsy, its nature, characteristics of those affected, communication and language disorders, the nature of these disorders, and epilepsy-related communication and language disorders were identified. The search was initially conducted with the keywords of epilepsy, language and communication. Then, articles about language disorders result from epilepsy in children were used. Findings: Children with epilepsy are delayed in developing language skills such as comprehension and production of words, comprehension and production of simple and complex sentences, and grammatical structure of sentences relative to their normal peers. These children also show deficits in word retrieval, and school-based learning skills, which can vary depending on the type of epilepsy, the severity of the lesion, sex, age at onset of epilepsy, verbal IQ, and the presence of co morbid disorders. Conclusion: Given the high prevalence of language disorders and subsequent communication disorders in children with epilepsy, the impact of these disorders on their future performance, including their academic performance and quality of life, and the high prevalence of epilepsy in this population, appropriate referral, careful assessment of language skills, and early intervention are essential and could prevent many of the following potential problems.

Keywords:

Communication Components , Language , Language Skills , Epilepsy