Transtornos de linguagem oral em crian？as pré-escolares com epilepsia: screening fonoaudiológico

background: oral language disorder and epilepsy in childhood. aim: to verify the occurrence of oral language disorders in epileptic preschoolers attended at the child neurology section of a university hospital. method: a prospective study with 30 epileptic children who were submitted to an oral speech-language evaluation. inclusion criteria: explicit diagnosis of epilepsy according to the ilae (2005); ages between 3 to 6 years; normal neurological standard and neuropsychomotor development. exclusion criteria: dubious diagnosis of epilepsy; altered neurological standard and neuropsychomotor development; children with associated pediatric disorders. analyzed variables were: gender, age of first seizure, types of seizure and treatment regime. or (odds ration) was determined, with a significance level of < 0.05. results: 18 (60%) children with epilepsy presented oral language disorders and 12 (40%) presented normal language development. regarding the observed disorders, 12 (67%) presented language disorder and 6 (33%) presented phonological disorder. male children (or = 2.03) and those with partial seizure (or = 2.41) demonstrated to have a higher risk for oral language disorders. conclusion: the results indicate that preschoolers with epilepsy present a predominance of oral language development delay, and that the male gender and partial seizure are risk factors for this age group.