STATUS EPILEPTICUS AND FRONTAL LOBE LESIONS

Our experience leads us to assume that two factors are necessary for the development of status epilepticus; first extensive frontal lobe damage and secondly cerebral oedema. It is possible that cerebral oedema leads to status in patients with diffuse brain damage when it spreads into the centrum semiovale and leads to functional damage or blocking of fronto-thalamic connections, since it is known that the white matter is particularly prone to oedema. It also seems likely that the rather uninhibited recurrence of attacks which characterises status is somehow linked with a structural or functional interruption of fronto-thalamic fibres belonging to a non-specific projection system passing from the reticular formation up to the cortex via the thalamus. This statement raises questions which properly belong to neurophysiology and neuropathology. Our purpose has been only to point out the clinical correlation between status and frontal lobes based on clinical observation and to show its value from a diagnostic point of view.