Seizure

The majority of patients with epilepsy may achieve symptomatic relief with antiepileptic medications, but up to 30% of patients develop medically refractory, intractable epilepsy [1]. In these patients, localization and surgical removal of focal epileptogenic zones are important steps in achieving seizure remission.

Drug resistant epilepsy comprises 30-40% of people suffering from focal epilepsy. High-quality imaging is crucial in the evaluation of drug resistant epilepsy patients, since as many as 50% of these patients may be potential candidates for surgical resection [1, 2]. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) preferably using a 3 T system is included in the pre-surgical work up for lesion detection [3]. The most important predictor for good surgical outcome is complete removal of an MRI detectable epileptogenic brain lesion [4, ...

Epileptic nystagmus is defined as rapid, repetitive eye movement associated with seizure activity. The description of nystagmus is based on the direction of its fast component. The first patients with epileptic nystagmus with corresponding electroencephalography (EEG) were described by Gastaut and Roger [1]. The condition is a rare accompanying clinical phenomenon of epilepsy. Although it may be isolated, it is generally observed together with other ictal clinical findings. Most reported cases of epileptic nystagmus are due to focal ictal discharges ...

Intracranial EEG (iEEG) monitoring is often required in preoperative evaluation of patients with refractory epilepsy, especially when noninvasive tests such as MRI, scalp EEG, PET and SPECT, etc. cannot identify the epileptogenic zone (EZ) or its proximity to eloquent cortex.[1, 2] Electrical cortical stimulation (ECS) has been regarded as a critical procedure in iEEG monitoring since 1950s. It was first applied in clinical practice to elicit behavioral responses as well as to localize seizure onset zone (SOZ) in epilepsy patients.

We are grateful for the interest expressed by Dr Finsterer and co-authors in our article. First, we want to emphasize that the study described is an epidemiological one – attempting to describe the incidence of epilepsy among those infected compared to an age-and sex-matched population sample in the years preceding the pandemic. The outcome was occurrence of a G40 ICD code: a validated administrative definition of epilepsy [1]. Indeed, the specificity increases if the ICD-10 code is combined with a ...

Epilepsy is a significant health problem that imposes a substantial burden on individuals, their caregivers and health systems.[1] Seizures are unpredictable and may cause serious complications, including sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP[1]).[1] Having (generalised or focal to bilateral) tonic-clonic seizures, particularly if nocturnal and unattended, constitutes the most significant SUDEP risk factor.[2,3,4] This poses an opportunity for seizure detection devices (SDDs), which might lower morbidity and mortality risk in epilepsy and potentially reduce the burden.

Epilepsy is a common disorder of the brain characterized by unprovoked and recurrent seizures due to abnormal neuronal activity (1). Functional dissociative seizures (FDS) are diagnosed in the presence of disturbing changes in behavior, cognition, or emotion that resemble epileptic seizures but lack the electrophysiological correlates or clinical evidence for epilepsy (2). This condition, also known in the literature as psychogenic nonepileptic seizures, is poorly recognized among clinicians and is diagnosed between 20% and 30% of patients referred to specialized ...

Letter to the Editor

Infantile epileptic spasms syndrome (IESS), characterized by epileptic spasms, regardless of hypsarrhythmia (HS) on EEG and neurodevelopmental delay, accounts for 10% of epileptic cases that begin prior to 36 months of age [1]. Incidence is estimated to be 2–3 per 10 000 live births, and the prevalence of IESS is approximately 0.015 cases per 1 000 people [2, 3]. The etiologies of IESS are largely heterogeneous and encompass almost all identifiable causes of epilepsy. In 2017, the International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE) ...

Sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP) is a witnessed or unwitnessed fatal event, which may include seizures, in patients with epilepsy without evidence of status epilepticus, trauma, drowning, or other toxicologic or anatomic aetiologies, as demonstrated by autopsy (Table 1) [1]. SUDEP may represent a clinical continuum with other conditions leading to sudden death in young people, such as sudden unexpected infant death and sudden infant death syndrome (Table 1) [1].