Prolonged Inpatient EEG Aids Seizure Diagnosis

The diagnostic yield of a routine outpatient EEG for epilepsy patients is between 30% and 50%. But what is the diagnostic yield of inpatient long-term monitoring (LTM) of EEG in patients with medication-refractory seizures? That is, how often does LTM change or clarify the diagnosis in these patients? To find out, researchers retrospectively reviewed data from 230 patients admitted to a tertiary-care hospital for diagnostic classification in 2004 and 2005.

Because of monitoring, the postadmission diagnosis differed from the preadmission diagnosis, or was further refined, in 71% of patients. Among the 133 patients with a change in diagnosis, the most common change (55%) was from epilepsy/nonepileptic attack disorder (NEAD) to either epilepsy …