Seizures, medical child abuse, and the pediatric neurologist.

Previously known as Munchausen syndrome by proxy, medical child abuse is a form of child maltreatment whereby the caregiver creates an environment in which medical care harms or threatens the wellbeing of a child. Approximately 40-50 % of medical child abuse cases involve neurological symptoms, with fabricated or induced seizures accounting for a significant proportion. Identifying fictitious seizures is often difficult even for the most experienced clinicians. Therefore, having a low threshold for clinical suspicion is essential in the timely diagnosis of medical child abuse. This article provides a review of the epidemiology, diagnosis, and management of medical child abuse when it involves seizures.

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Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier Inc.

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.