Abstract
Stroke is one of the most common causes of disability in Saudi Arabia and when seizures complicate the stroke, the disability, cost, psychological impact and post traumatic stress on the family are tremendously increased. As for the best of author's knowledge there is no available data regarding the incidence, frequency, outcome and the risk factors or predictors of seizures after stroke in Saudi Population. Our study was conducted in King Fahd Hospital located in Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. It is the main tertiary care Hospital in the region. We collected our sample in three consecutive years from 2007 to 2009. In the first two years data was collected from medical records system and in the third year the data of patients and controls was collected from newly admitted stroke patients. The study concluded mean incidence of post stroke epilepsy (PSE) to be about 9.6 %. A lower blood sugar and higher Rankin Disability scores were found to be significantly higher amongst patients with post-stroke epilepsy. There was no significant difference in co morbid diseases on developing PSE. The present study also showed that the occurrence of post stroke epilepsy was positively associated with increasing age and male gender.