There have been few studies of long-term survival of children with epilepsy. In published studies, follow-up has usually been no more than 10 years and autopsy data have been sparse. Now a study in Finland (Matti Sillanpää, Shlomo Shinnar. N Engl J Med 2010;363:2522–9) has provided 40-year data.

The study included all 245 children (<16 years old) in the catchment area of Turku University Hospital, who were known to have epilepsy (two …