Epilepsy is one of the common chronic neurologic disorder. Epilepsy affects approximately 50 million people worldwide. The causes of epilepsy can be put into three main groups: symptomatic, idiopathic or cryptogenic epilepsy. Aetiology of epilepsy is different for children and adults. Common causes of childhood epilepsy include genetic factors and prenatal injury. The older the patient, the more likely it is that the cause is an underlying brain disease, such as a brain tumour or cerebrovascular disease, or is the result of head injury. Important diagnostic and therapeutic problems occur in young patients between 20 and 45 years. Despite that incidence rate of epilepsy is the lowest in this group about 65–75 % of all case of epilepsy has no identifiable cause and is known as cryptogenic epilepsy. For many years it has believed that the first epileptic seizures in young after 20 years old have been symptoms of the brain tumour. The authors review data from literature and show that symptomatic epilepsy occurs only in 30% young patients and appears with the head injury, brain tumours, cerebral arteriovenous malformations, alcohol withdraw,infections as meningitis. The new advances in brain imaging such as MRI morphometry, MRI spectroscopy may reveal epileptic lesions in patients considered to have cryptogenic epilepsy. Future improvements in ability to diagnose and localize epileptogenic focus should enable a more-effective clinical evaluation and successful treatment.

aetiology of epilepsy, cryptogenic epilepsy, epilepsy in young, symptomatic epilepsy, hippocampal sclerosis