Study aims are to assess cognitive dysfunction in nine individuals with one or more episodes of status epilepticus(SE)and to compare performance against control patients with brief seizures(idiopathic generalised epilepsy IGE, temporal lobe epilepsy TLE), and against adult performance norms. Participants with SE (30-60 minutes seizure duration) were recruited from the Cairns Base Hospital's epilepsy clinic, and included non-convulsive SE (NCSE, N=3) and generalised convulsive SE (GCSE, N=6) patients. Neuropsychological tasks assessed cognitive domains of intelligence, attention, verbal and visual memory, and executive functions. The absence SE (ASE) patient functioned normally in all cognitive domains. The patient with left complex partial status (CPSE) was significantly worse in attention; while the right CPSE patient was weakest in verbal episodic memory. GCSE patients performed worse on Sustained Attention NTS tasks than control IGE and TLE patients with brief seizures. Verbal memory was preserved. Number of SE seizures correlated negatively with estimated I.Q., visual abilities and working memory. In the absence of localised neuropsychological deficits, the deficits in stained attention and intellectual abilities of patients with GCSE suggest global cognitive dysfunction can result from relatively brief SE seizures. Generalisation of seizures cannot account for this, since the IGE performances were not affected
