ABSTRACT
To a large extent, the prognosis of epilepsy is determined by the type of epilepsy. The International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE) has made concerted efforts to identify distinctive forms of epilepsy and to arrange them into a practical classification of the epilepsies. Thoughtful and scholarly treatments of these efforts are available.3-5 Although imperfect and as yet incomplete, the ILAE classification provides a useful framework for thinking about epilepsy6,7 (Table 26.1). In children the most aggressively intractable forms of epilepsy arise from certain clusters of syndromes, some generalized, some localization-related, and some with combinations of features.
