This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Reply to article  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citing articles on Web of Science (3)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Arja Tuunainen, MD; Unto Nousiainen, MD; Esa Mervaala, MD; Paavo Riekkinen, MD

Arch Neurol. 1990;47(7):799-800.

Abstract
• The duration of an ambulatory electroencephalogram (aEEG) necessary to record epileptic seizures was studied in neurological patients. A total of 2221 aEEG recordings were made for 2035 inpatients. Ambulatory EEG lasting 1 to 8 days (mean, 1.6 days) included seizures or typical undiagnosed symptomatic attacks in 750 recordings (34%), and 266 of them were epileptic in origin. Symptomatic attacks without simultaneous EEG discharges were exhibited in 27% of the epileptic patients. Of the total number of epileptic seizures, 81% were encountered during the first 24 hours, an additional 10% during the next 24 hours, and 7% during the third 24-hour period. Our conclusion was that, in patients exhibiting epileptic seizures during the aEEG recording, the diagnosis will be confirmed by a 2-day recording in the vast majority of the cases.

Author Affiliations
From the Department of Clinical Neurophysiology, Vaajasalo Hospital (Drs Tuunainen, Nousiainen, and Mervaala), and the Department of Neurology, Kuopio University Central Hospital (Dr Riekkinen), Kuopio, Finland.

Footnotes
Accepted for publication October 27, 1989.

Presented in part at the American Association of Electromyography and Eledtrodiagnosis meeting, San Diego, Calif, October 2-5, 1988.

Reprint requests to Department of Clinical Neurophysiology, Vaajasalo Hospital, SF-71130 Kortejoki, Finland (Dr Tuunainen).

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?