Continuous EEG monitoring in the follow-up of convulsive status epilepticus patients: A proposal and preliminary validation of an EEG-based seizure build-up score (EaSiBUSSEs)

International audienceContinuous electroencephalography (EEG) is a major tool for monitoring patients admitted to the intensive care unit after refractory convulsive status epilepticus, following control of convulsive movements. We review the values of different EEG patterns observed in critically ill patients for prognosis and seizure risk, together with proposed criteria for non-convulsive status epilepticus diagnosis (Salzburg Criteria), the EEG scores for prognosis (Epidemiology-based Mortality score in Status Epilepticus, EMSE) and for seizure risk (2HELPS2B). These criteria and scores, based partially on continuous EEG, are not tailored to repetitively monitor the progressive build-up leading to seizure or status epilepticus recurrence. Therefore, we propose a new EEG-based seizure build-up score in status epilepticus (EaSiBUSSEs), based on the morphology and the prevalence of the EEG patterns observed in the follow-up of convulsive status epilepticus patients. It displays subscores from the least (no interictal activity) to the most associated with seizures (focal or generalized status epilepticus). We then evaluated the performance of the EaSiBUSSEs in a cohort of eleven patients who were admitted to intensive care unit for convulsive status epilepticus and who underwent continuous EEG recording. The receiver operating curve revealed good accuracy in identifying patients who would have seizures in the next 24 h, with excellent intra- and inter-rater reliability. We believe that this score is simple to perform, and suitable for repeated monitoring of EEG following refractory convulsive status epilepticus, with quantitative description of major EEG changes leading to seizures

Sleep Apnea in Elderly Adults with Chronic Insomnia

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Clinical characteristics of sleep apnea in middle-old and oldest-old inpatients: symptoms and comorbidities

International audienceBackground: Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is prevalent in older adults but still underdiagnosed for many reasons, such as underreported symptoms, non-specific ones because of the comorbidities and polypharmacy, or the social belief of sleep problems as normal with aging.Objectives: To identify salient symptoms and comorbidities associated with OSA, diagnosed by nocturnal respiratory polygraphy in geriatric inpatients.Method: We conducted a retrospective, cross-sectional study in a sample of 102 geriatric inpatients from a French Geriatric University Hospital. We reviewed medical records to collect demographic, medical information including comorbidities, the geriatric cumulative illness rating scale (CIRS-G), subjective sleep-related symptoms and data of overnight level three portable sleep polygraphy recording.Results: Among classic OSA symptoms, only excessive daytime sleepiness (p = 0.02) and nocturnal choking (p = 0.03) were more prevalent in older inpatients with OSA (n = 64) than in those without (n = 38). The prevalence of comorbidities and mean CIRS-G scores were not different between groups except for the lower prevalence of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and the higher level of creatinine clearance in OSA patients. Multivariate analysis showed OSA was associated with excessive daytime sleepiness (OR = 2.83, p = 0.02) in symptoms-related model and with composite CIRS-G score (OR 1.26, p = 0.04) in comorbidities-related model.Conclusions: Only excessive daytime sleepiness and comorbidity severity (composite CIRS-G score) were associated with the objective diagnosis of OSA, while other usual clinical OSA symptoms and comorbidities in geriatric inpatients were not. These findings emphasize the importance of excessive daytime sleepiness symptom, when reported in comorbid older patients, strongly suggesting OSA and requiring adequate nocturnal exploration

Diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease with Electroencephalography in a differential framework.

This study addresses the problem of Alzheimer's disease (AD) diagnosis with Electroencephalography (EEG). The use of EEG as a tool for AD diagnosis has been widely studied by comparing EEG signals of AD patients only to those of healthy subjects. By contrast, we perform automated EEG diagnosis in a differential diagnosis context using a new database, acquired in clinical conditions, which contains EEG data of 169 patients: subjective cognitive impairment (SCI) patients, mild cognitive impairment (MCI) patients, possible Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients, and patients with other pathologies. We show that two EEG features, namely epoch-based entropy (a measure of signal complexity) and bump modeling (a measure of synchrony) are sufficient for efficient discrimination between these groups. We studied the performance of our methodology for the automatic discrimination of possible AD patients from SCI patients and from patients with MCI or other pathologies. A classification accuracy of 91.6% (specificity = 100%, sensitivity = 87.8%) was obtained when discriminating SCI patients from possible AD patients and 81.8% to 88.8% accuracy was obtained for the 3-class classification of SCI, possible AD and other patients

Relationship between sleep parameters, insulin resistance and age-adjusted insulin like growth factor-1 score in non diabetic older patients.

Sleep complaints are prevalent in older patients. Sleepiness, short or long sleep duration and obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) are associated with insulin resistance (IR). These parameters have not yet been considered together in the same study exploring the possible association between IR and sleep in older patients. IR is involved in cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, pathologies which are highly prevalent in older patients. Here we assess, in older non-diabetic patients with sleep complaints, the associations between IR and sleep parameters objectively recorded by polysomnography (PSG) rather than self-report. The Growth Hormone/Insulin like growth factor-1 axis could play a role in the development of IR during sleep disorders. The second objective of this study was to analyze the association between sleep parameters and age-adjusted IGF-1 score, which could explain the association between OSA and IR.72 non-diabetic older patients, mean age 74.5 ± 7.8 years, were included in this observational study. We evaluated anthropometric measures, subjective and objective sleepiness, polysomnography, Homeostatic Model Assessment for IR (HOMA-IR) and age-adjusted IGF-1 score. A multivariate regression was used to determine factors associated with HOMA-IR.The 47 OSA patients were over-weight but not obese and had higher IR than the non-OSA patients. In multilinear regression analysis, apnea-hypopnea index was independently associated with IR after adjustment for several confounding factors. Neither IGF-1 level nor IGF-1 score were different in the two groups.We demonstrate that in non-diabetic older patients with sleep complaints, OSA is independently associated with IR, regardless of anthropometric measurements and sleep parameters (sleep duration/sleepiness/arousals). Targeting OSA to reduce IR could be useful in the elderly, although further exploration is required

Complications after surgery for mesial temporal lobe epilepsy associated with hippocampal sclerosis

International audienceBackgroundHippocampal sclerosis is the most common cause of drug-resistant epilepsy amenable for surgical treatment and seizure control. This study aimed to analyze morbidities related to surgery of mesial temporal lobe epilepsy associated with hippocampal sclerosis and to identify possible risk factors for complications.MethodsA retrospective analysis of postoperative complications was made for 389 operations performed between 1990 and 2015 on patients aged 15 to 67 years (mean 36.8). Three surgical approaches were used: anterior temporal lobectomy (ATL) (n=209), transcortical selective amygdalohippocampectomy (SAH) (n=144) and transylvian SAH (n=36). Complications were classified as minor, or major if there was a neurological impairment or if further surgical or medical treatment was needed.ResultsComplications followed 15.4% of operations. They were classed as major for 4.1% of patients, but there were no mortalities. Persistent neurological deficits occurred in 0.5% of patients. In 3 cases (0.8%) additional surgery was needed to treat an intracranial hematoma, a delayed hydrocephalus and a subdural empyema. Symptomatic visual field defects (VFDs) were frequent and included contralateral superior quadrantanopia (8.2%) or hemianopia (1.3%). Overall complications (P=0.04) and symptomatic VFDs (P=0.04) were most frequent in operations on men. Major complications occurred most often with the ATL surgical approach than with transcortical SAH (P=0.03).ConclusionsMajor complications occur rarely after mesial temporal surgery on epileptic patients. They occur more often following ATL than transcortical SAH approach. Complications tend to be temporary with symptoms of limited duration for surgery performed by experienced teams on carefully selected and evaluated patients.Key Word

Medial temporal lobe epilepsy associated with hippocampal sclerosis is a distinctive syndrome

International audienceEpileptic syndromes are distinctive disorders with specific features, which when taken together, permit a specific diagnosis. There is actually a debate on that medial temporal lobe epilepsy with hippocampal sclerosis is an epileptic syndrome. To address this issue, we searched for discriminative semiological features between temporal lobe epilepsy patients with hippocampal sclerosis (TLE-HS patients or group 1), TLE patients with medial structural lesion other than hippocampal sclerosis or in MRI-negative cases with medial onset on further investigations (group 2) and lateral TLE patients (LTLE or group 3). We retrospectively collected data from medical and EEG-video records of 523 TLE patients, referred for surgery to the Pitié-Salpêtrière Epileptology Unit between 1991 and 2014. We identified 389 patients belonging to group 1, 61 patients belonging to group 2, and 73 patients belonging to group 3 and performed a comparative analysis of their clinical data and surgical outcomes. TLE-HS patients (group 1): (1) began epilepsy earlier (11 ± 9 vs. 20 ± 10 vs. 15 ± 9 years); (2) exhibited more frequently early febrile convulsions (FC) (59 vs 7 vs 5%); (3) presented more: ictal gestural automatisms (90 vs 54 vs 67%), dystonic posturing (47 vs 20 vs 23%), and secondary generalized tonic–clonic seizures (GTCS) (70 vs 44% vs 48%) as compared to both groups 2 and 3 patients (all p < 0.001). With respect to auras, abdominal visceral auras were more reported by TLE-HS than by LTLE patients (49 vs 16%). Three cardinal criteria correctly classified 94% of patients into TLE-HS group: history of FC, dystonic posturing, and secondary GTCS. Postoperative outcome was significantly better in TLE-HS group than in the two other groups (p = 0.03 and 0.003). Our study demonstrates that cardinal criteria are reliably helpful to distinguish patients with TLE-HS from those with other TLE and may allow considering TLE-HS as a distinctive syndrome

De Novo Focal Motor Status Epilepticus in Late Life: Which Profile?

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Safety profile of intracranial electrode implantation for video-EEG recordings in drug-resistant focal epilepsy.

International audienceInvasive electroencephalography recordings with depth or subdural electrodes are necessary to identify the ictogenic area in some drug-resistant focal epilepsies. We aimed to analyze the safety profile of intracranial electrode implantation in a tertiary center and the factors associated with its complications. We retrospectively examined complications in 163 intracranial procedures performed in adult patients. Implantation methods included oblique depth stereotactic approach (n = 128) and medial-temporal depth stereotactic approach in combination with subdural strip placement (n = 35). 1201 depth macroelectrodes, 59 bundles of microelectrodes (in 30 patients) and 148 subdural electrodes were implanted. Complications were classified as major (requiring treatment or leading to neurological impairment) or minor. The rate of overall complications was 4.9 % (n = 8), with 3.1 % (n = 5) of major complications, though no permanent morbidity or mortality was recorded. Infection occurred in 1.2 % and hemorrhage in 3.7 % of patients. One hemorrhage occurred for every 225 electrodes implanted (4.4 ‰). Microelectrodes were not responsible for any complications. Overall and hemorrhagic complications were significantly associated with MRI-negative cases (7.3 and 6.3 % versus 0 %, p = 0.04). We believe that intracranial electrode implantation has a favorable safety profile, without permanent deficit. These risks should be balanced with the benefits of invasive exploration prior to surgery. Furthermore, this study provides preliminary evidence regarding the safety of micro-macroelectrodes

Confusion matrix for differential AD diagnosis with four groups of patients.

<p>Confusion matrix for differential AD diagnosis with four groups of patients.</p