BACKGROUND Brain Trauma Foundation guidelines recommend seizure prophylaxis for preventing early posttraumatic seizure (PTS). Phenytoin (PHE) is commonly used. Despite a paucity of data in traumatic brain injury, levetiracetam (LEV) has been introduced as a potential replacement, which is more costly but does not require serum monitoring. The purpose of this study was to compare the efficacy of...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Intractable epilepsy is a well-recognized complication following head trauma, and many factors have been implicated in its pathogenesis. This study was performed to determine the severity of tissue damage after severe head injury as assessed with magnetization transfer (MT) MR imaging and the relationship of this damage with seizure intractability. METHODS Forty-four pa...

PURPOSE Ictal piloerection is an infrequent seizure semiology that is commonly overlooked as an ictal epileptic manifestation. Piloerection is considered to be principally caused by temporal lobe activity although frontal and hypothalamic seizure origins have been reported. The described etiology has shown a wide variety of structural causes such as mesial temporal sclerosis, tumors, posttrauma...

A 48-year-old male was diagnosed with both drug resistant epilepsy and psychogenic nonepileptic seizures. Both diagnoses were confirmed by video-EEG monitoring. His epileptic seizures were a consequence of right mesial temporal sclerosis. He was diagnosed by a psychiatrist to have depression and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Following a right anterior temporal resection he became seizur...

A 34-year-old man developed posttraumatic epilepsy and a disinhibited orbitofrontal syndrome following severe head trauma at age 22. After an 11-year prison term marked by repeated impulsive aggression, he was transferred to a state psychiatric hospital. Replacement of phenytoin by valproic acid resulted in a 100-lb weight gain, exacerbation of sleep apnea, and right heart failure. Despite repl...

Psychosensory symptoms have relevance to the study of chronic posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), given that their presence is associated with limbic system dysfunction and that several features of chronic PTSD suggest that it, too, may be associated with limbic dysfunction. The Iowa Interview for Partial Seizure-like Symptoms (IIPSS), a measure of psychosensory symptoms, was administered to ...

Breast cancer is the most common type of cancer among women that creates stress in physical, mental, and spiritual aspects of patients’ life. Adjustment consequences for these patients may lead to posttraumatic growth. Given the impacts of spirituality on posttraumatic growth, the present study aimed to examine the role of religious coping in predicting posttraumatic growth among patients...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the efficacy and safety of bilateral pallidotomies in five patients with generalized dystonia. BACKGROUND Generalized dystonias are frequently a therapeutic challenge, with poor responses to pharmacological treatment. GPi (globus pallidus internus) pallidotomies for Parkinson's disease ameliorate all kinds of dyskinesias/dystonia, and recent studies reported a marked imp...

There is an uncertainty regarding the time period for seizures onset and the possible role of tissue changes for constituting an epileptogenic focus in intractable seizures following head trauma. MT MRI was performed in 44 individuals (13 controls, and 31 with seizures from 1-10 years following trauma) to assess the severity of tissue damage and its relationship with intractability. The group w...