electroencephalogram in cirrhotic children without clinical encephalopathy

Background: this study aimed to determine the electroencephalogram (eeg) findings in children with hepatic cirrhosis, which occurred without clinical encephalopathy.methods: the present study was conducted in an observational-analytical way at amir-al-momenin zabol hospital, zabol university of medical sciences, iran. in this study, 50 children with hepatic cirrhosis without encephalopathy symptoms and 50 healthy children were evaluated and studied regarding abnormal findings in eeg. finally, the data were analyzed using spss v22 software.results: the mean and standard deviation of the age of the studied population was 57.6 ± 76.17 months. out of a total of 50 children with hepatic cirrhosis, 21 children (42%) had abnormal findings in eeg, while none of the children in the healthy group had abnormal findings in eeg. there was a significant relationship between abnormal eeg findings and older age (p=0.001), underlying autoimmune hepatitis disease (p=0.011), and abnormal (increased) serum levels of alanineamino transferase (alt) (p=0.030) and aspartate amino transferase (ast) (p=0.010) enzymes. children with cirrhosis who had abnormal eeg findings had a higher average pediatric end-stage liver disease (peld) score (18.1 ± 4.1) than patients with normal eeg findings (17.2 ± 3.7), but these findings were not statistically significant and noticeable (p=0.073). the sensitivity of eeg for predicting the severity of cirrhosis was estimated to be 70% and its specificity was 65%.conclusion: the results of the present study indicated that the higher sensitivity of eeg compared to the specificity in predicting the severity of cirrhosis indicates that eeg is more useful to rule out severe cirrhosis or to screen cirrhosis patients at risk of deterioration than to confirm its diagnosis.