Seizure

Epilepsy is a chronic condition that impacts over 95,000 Ontarians, of whom approximately 15,000 are children [1]. While most individuals with epilepsy can be treated effectively by a primary care provider or neurologist, an estimated 30% of those diagnosed will end up having drug resistant epilepsy (DRE), which is defined as experiencing seizures that do not respond to treatment with two or more appropriate antiepileptic drugs [2]. These children experience poor quality of life and represent a burden for the ...

Dear Editor, we would like to share ideas on the publication “COVID-19 vaccination uptake in people with epilepsy in wales [1].” Welsh electronic health records that were linked and anonymously stored in the Secure Anonymized Information Linkage (SAIL) Databank were used in a retrospective population cohort research carried out by Strafford et al. [1]. According to Strafford et al., vaccination rates were greater for both cohorts among older demographics, women, and residents of less impoverished areas [1].

The novel coronavirus, a virus with a high potential for transmission [1–3], was responsible for the recent pandemic (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 – SARS-CoV 2), which led to the implementation of social distancing measures around the world to control the virus spread and incidence of new cases [4].

Non-epileptic paroxysmal events (NEPEs) are common in pediatric patients and may be misdiagnosed as epileptic seizures. We aimed to study the distribution of NEPEs across age groups and with different comorbidities, and to correlate the patients’ presenting symptoms with their final diagnosis after video-EEG.

Epilepsy, one of the most common neurological diseases globally, affects around 50 million persons worldwide. [1] Approximately 80% of persons with epilepsy (PWE) live in low- or middle-income countries. [2] Current practice guidelines from the United Kingdom (UK) state that adult patients presenting with a single seizure should be seen by an epileptologist within four weeks of a first time seizure (FTS), which may be logistically challenging to implement in the United States. [3] The period following the initial seizure ...

Seizure clusters (SC) are episodes of consecutive seizures occurring in a short while, with the patient returning to normal state in the inter-ictal period. Despite several efforts, a consensus to define SC among clinicians and researchers has not yet been reached. Consequently, several definitions of SC have been adopted, namely 3 or more seizures in 24 hours, 2 or more seizures in 24 hours and 2 or more seizures in 6 hours [1].

Interictal autonomic dysfunction in patients with epilepsy (PWE) has been evaluated mainly at the cardiovascular level, with heart rate variability being the most studied parameter and alterations observed mainly in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE), Dravet syndrome and drug-resistant epilepsies [1]. Despite the fact that there have been some studies that have evaluated ictal and periictal blood pressure (BP) in PWE [2–4], interictal BP and the possible alteration of its central control have not been widely evaluated: the prevalence ...

: Automated detection of spikes and seizures has been a subject of research for several decades now. There have been important advances, yet automated detection in EMU (Epilepsy Monitoring Unit) settings has not been accepted as standard practice. We intend to implement this software at our EMU and so carried out a qualitative study to identify factors that hinder (‘barriers’) and facilitate (‘enablers’) implementation.

Sodium valproate (VPA) is usually regarded as the best available antiseizure medication (ASM) in generalized genetic epilepsies (GGEs), such as juvenile myoclonic epilepsy (JME), juvenile absence epilepsy (JAE), epilepsy with generalized tonic‒clonic seizures alone (GTCA), and epilepsy with eyelid myoclonia (EEM), with the potential to control all seizure types present in these epilepsy syndromes [1,2,3]. Compared with currently used ASMs, VPA showed superiority in controlling myoclonic (MS) and generalized tonic‒clonic seizures (GTCS) and a reasonable effect in absence seizures (AS) ...

Childhood epilepsy has life-long effects that extend beyond the disruption attributed to seizure activity [1,2]. These effects have been investigated using proxy reports typically from parents [3], quantitative assessments of quality of life [4–6] and qualitative methods eliciting children’s self-reported lived experience [7–14]. These studies evidence the negative impact epilepsy has on children’s independence, school performance and relationships with peers. Retrospective qualitative research has captured the experiences of adults with epilepsy coming to terms with their diagnosis, some during childhood ...