Pediatric Neurologic Disorders at a Tertiary Healthcare Facility in North-Central Nigeria: A 5 Year Review

Background: Neurologic disorders in children are common occurrences in clinical practice; they constitute a major cause of morbidity and disability in childhood. Children with neurologic disorders in developing countries are faced with the added burden of poverty, inadequate health facilities, inadequate community services, poor parental education/awareness as well as lack of facilities for rehabilitative care.

Aim: To describe the pattern of neurologic disorders at a pediatric neurology clinic in a tertiary healthcare facility in north-central Nigeria.

Study Design: This was a retrospective descriptive study.

Place and Duration of Study: Pediatric neurology clinic, Jos University Teaching Hospital, Nigeria between January 2011 and December 2015.

Methodology: We reviewed the clinical records of all children seen at the pediatric neurology clinic of Jos University Teaching Hospital, Nigeria between January 2011 and December 2015. We extracted relevant information from the clinical records. We analysed the data obtained with EpiInfo version 7.2, results were expressed as descriptive statistics.

Results: There were 8,307 consultations at the pediatric neurology clinic within the study period, accounting for 21.3% of all consultations at the pediatric specialist clinics. A total of 3,056 patients were seen at the clinic during the study period. Males were 1,785 (58.4%) while females were 1,271 (41.6%) with a male: Female ratio of 1.4:1. The 3,056 patients had a total of 4,967 neurologic disorders with an average of 1.6 disorders per patient. One thousand nine hundred and thirty-two (63.2%) had one disorder while 1,124 (36.8%) had multiple disorders. The commonest neurologic disorders seen during the study period were epilepsy 2,512 (50.6%), cerebral palsy 734 (14.8%), intellectual disability 677 (13.6%), speech defect 363 (7.3%) and hearing impairment 139 (2.7%).

Conclusion: Epilepsy and cerebral palsy were the commonest neurologic disorders observed in this study. Preventable causes such as severe birth asphyxia, neonatal jaundice and central nervous system infections were predominantly responsible for most of the childhood neurologic disorders seen in this study. Improvement in basic healthcare especially maternal, newborn and child care will help reduce the incidence of neurologic disorders in developing countries.