Vaccination is a common act in medicine. Some serious side effects are always feared in a preventive action, mainly among high-risk patients such as epileptic children or children having already experienced a seizure.
Objectives: To study consequences of such background on the vaccine medical practice.
Population and methods: A retrospective study comparing the vaccine statute of children with or without case history of seizures was carried out by the neurologic and paediatric emergencies departments. The study compared 55 with seizures versus 109 without.
Results: On the whole, the 2 groups were insufficiently vaccinated. A statistically significant difference was highlighted between the 2 groups for the vaccination coverage by vaccine DTP (diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis) (P=0.017) and MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) (P=0.004). However, concerning the vaccination against hepatitis B, no difference was found.
Conclusion: The usual contra-indications of these vaccines do not explain this difference and progress must be made to improve the vaccination coverage of epileptic children.