Seizure

Among patients presenting with first seizure (FS) to emergency department (ED), the challenge for the evaluating physician is to identify patients with acute symptomatic seizures. Formally, an acute symptomatic seizure is defined as a clinical seizure occurring at the time of a systemic insult or in close temporal association with a documented brain insult [1]. Pragmatically, acute symptomatic seizures are symptoms of a condition deserving immediate attention and treatment, such as stroke or central nervous system infection.

The new definition of epilepsy establishes that epilepsy is not only a disorder presenting with epileptic seizures but it can be often associated with cognitive and psychiatric comorbidities. In fact, the prevalence of psychiatric comorbidities is relatively high in patients with epilepsy (PWE), as one in three patients will have experienced a psychiatric disorder in the course of their life, with mood and anxiety disorders being the most frequent.Psychiatric comorbidities often precede the onset of the seizure disorder, and affect ...

Approximately 2–5% of the world’s population experiences a seizure in their lifetime [1]. The underlying cause may be revealed by brain CT or MRI. However, early peri-ictal imaging often exhibits abnormalities that might be the consequence of seizures, rather than the cause.

Duplication of chromosome region 8q21.13-q22.2 is a rare abnormal copy number variant (CNV) previously reported in a few patients. Although these reports have mentioned the presence of seizures, the description was vague and an electroclinical syndrome has not been delineated [1–3]. Herein, we aimed to outline the epilepsy phenotype associated with 8q21.13-q22.2 duplication adding a new genetic finding to the spectrum of genetic generalized epilepsies (GGEs). Ethics approval was granted by the University Health Network Research Ethics Board.

Epilepsy is the most common serious neurological disease. Although the majority of patients suffering from epilepsy are well-managed with anti-epileptic drugs (AEDs), approximately 30% of people affected by epilepsy still have recurrent seizures and are drug resistant, which can result in a progression to intractable epilepsy (IE) [1–4]. Patients with intractable temporal lobe epilepsy are usually excellent candidates for epilepsy surgery, which is efficacious in up to 70% of cases [5]. IE can give rise to serious clinical problems.

Eslicarbazepine-acetate (ESL) is a third generation antiepileptic drug licensed as adjunctive therapy in adults with focal seizures. Efficacy and safety of ESL has been established in real-life setting. However, data about outcomes in elderly patients are scarce. Primary endpoint was to evaluate outcomes of ESL in elderly patients.

Vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) has shown to be an effective treatment for drug resistant epilepsy in numerous patients. However, long-term studies showed that a good response (>50% seizure reduction) is only achieved in 20 to 55% of the patients [1–3], which means that a substantial number of patients only show moderate or even no response to VNS treatment. Determining the success of VNS is important to counsel patients and give them information about the expected seizure reduction. Potential responders might ...