The seizure syndrome combined with sensorimotor aphasia and alalia (the Landau-Kleffner syndrome)
Electric brain activity and clinical status were studied in children with Landau-Kleffner syndrome. The paper covers 21 cases of the disease in patients aged from 2 years 11 months to 16 years in whom speech disorders and convulsive episodes varied in onset. A characteristic EEG pattern was recorded in the majority of the examinees. It comprised slow high-amplitude spike-and-wave complexes localized primarily in the temporal regions, more frequently on the left side. Clinically, the children belonged to 2 groups: epileptic aphasia and epileptic alalia patients. The latter had more significant EEG changes attributed to earlier onset of this disease. The data obtained showed the importance of combined clinical and EEG investigations in the diagnosis of Landau-Kleffner syndrome.