INTRODUCTION Psychogenic nonepileptic seizures (PNES) are episodic alterations in behavior presumed to reflect a physical manifestation of underlying psychological distress. Standardized treatment approaches for PNES care are lacking. We evaluated common approaches to PNES management that do not require significant commitment of time and resources. METHODOLOGY Patients with PNES established w...

OBJECTIVE To assess whether surgery to reduce or control epileptic seizures is safe and effective in patients known to have additional psychogenic seizures. DESIGN We reviewed our computerized database of 1342 patients examined for epilepsy surgery and identified 13 patients with both epileptic and psychogenic seizures on whom postoperative outcome data were available. Data were gathered from...

PURPOSE Communicating the diagnosis of psychogenic nonepileptic seizures (PNES) is a challenging task. This study was carried out to assess the acceptability and effectiveness of a new communication procedure consisting of a patient information leaflet and a communication strategy for neurologists. METHODS In a multicenter prospective study, 50 patients newly diagnosed with PNES were informed...

although treated properly for epilepsy, a number of epileptic children have intractable seizures and about 5-10 per cent of them do not respond to anti -epileptic drugs. in the years 1986-1996 about 10,000 epileptic patients were treated in the children's medical center in tehran. a retrospective study of their medical records revealed that 41 of them had intractable seizures. i of these 4...

Psychogenic non-epileptic seizures can co-exist with epileptic seizures. Differentiating between the two is central to appropriate management. We report the case of a patient with established focal epilepsy who developed psychogenic non-epileptic seizures in direct response to second-person auditory hallucinations. To our knowledge, this is the first description of such an occurrence. These non...

Commentary The diagnosis of psychogenic nonepileptic seizures (PNES) continues to be clinically challenging despite increasing evidence that delay in diagnosis is related to increased use/cost of medical services; poor quality of life; psychiatric comor-bidities, including posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression; medically unexplained symptoms; family dysfunc-tion; unemployment; and...

Heart rate changes are common in epileptic and non-epileptic seizures. Previous studies have not adequately assessed the contribution of motor activity on these changes nor have evaluated them during prolonged monitoring. We retrospectively evaluated 143 seizures and auras from 76 patients admitted for video EEG monitoring. The events were classified according to the degree of ictal motor activ...

PURPOSE To investigate clinical differences between patients with psychogenic nonepileptic seizures (PNES) who report antecedent sexual abuse, and patients who do not. METHODS In a consecutive series of 176 patients with video-EEG confirmed PNES without epilepsy, we compared patients who reported antecedent sexual abuse with those who did not report sexual abuse, in respect of a range of demo...

Psychogenic non-epileptic spells are a form of conversion disorder which is characterized by “seizure like episodes” often misdiagnosed as epilepsy. These are frequently seen in adults with female predominance but occur also in children. The gold standard, for a definitive diagnosis, is inpatient video-EEG monitoring in a specialized epilepsy monitoring unit to capture these episodes. There is ...