• Ivana Šušak Sporiš, Davor Sporiš, Zrinka Čolak Romić, Petra Bago Rožanković, and Silvio Bašić.
• 1Department of Neurology, Dubrava University Hospital, Zagreb, Croatia; 
2Faculty of Dental Medicine and Health, Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek, Osijek, Croatia; 
3Faculty of Medicine, Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek, Osijek, Croatia; 
4University of Applied Health Science in Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia; 
5Chatolic University of Croatia, Zagreb, Croatia.
• Acta Clin Croat. 2021 Dec 1; 60 (Suppl 3): 505650-56.

AbstractThe most common neurological symptoms in patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection are headache, myalgia, encephalopathy, dizziness, dysgeusia and anosmia, making more than 90 percent of neurological manifestations of COVID-19. Other neurological manifestations such as stroke, movement disorder symptoms or epileptic seizures are rare but rather devastating, with possible lethal outcome. The primary aim of this study was to estimate the prevalence of acute symptomatic seizures among COVID-19 patients, while secondary aim was to determine their possible etiology. Out of 5382 patients with COVID-19 admitted to Dubrava University Hospital from November 1, 2020 until June 1, 2021, 38 (seizure rate 0.7%) of them had acute symptomatic seizures. Of these 38 patients, 29 (76.3%) had new-onset epileptic seizures and nine (23.7%) patients with previous epilepsy history had breakthrough seizures during COVID-19. Although acute symptomatic seizures are an infrequent complication of COVID-19, seizure risk must be considered in these patients, particularly in the group of patients with a severe course of the disease. Accumulation of proinflammatory cytokines may contribute to the occurrence of seizures in patients with COVID-19, but seizures may also be secondary to primary brain pathology related to COVID-19, such as stroke or encephalitis.

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