PURPOSE A proportion of patients with childhood and juvenile absence epilepsies (CAE, JAE) are likely to be classified as medically refractory. In view of evidence gap for the treatment of such patients, this series is reported to generate estimate for efficacy of vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) in this patient population. METHODS Patients were identified by a chart review of all VNS recipients...

objective the first attack of unprovoked seizure is more frequent than recurrent one and neuroimaging is one of the main parts of the evaluation of these attacks in order to demonstrate the cause and predict the prognosis. the aim of this study was to determine the incidence of abnormal neuroimaging and related factors in children with the first unprovoked seizure. materials & methods a 7-year ...

Levetiracetam (LEV) is effective for treating localisation-related epilepsy, but it is uncertain whether it is effective for treating idiopathic generalised epilepsy. We compared 12-week baseline and LEV treatment periods for patients with generalised seizure types-myoclonic, tonic-clonic and absence seizures--who had failed other anticonvulsants. The majority of 55 patients (76%) had >50% seiz...

Effects of intraperitoneally administered dihydropyridine calcium channel blocker-nifedipine (NIF) 5 mg/kg and diphenylhydantoin (DPH) 5 mg/kg were studied on hippocampal kindling and maximum electro shock thresholds (MEST). All the NIF injected rats showed complete suppression of behavioral seizure after the 3rd injection. Few of the DPH rats had increased epileptic activity for two days and o...

INTRODUCTION Juvenile myoclonic epilepsy (JME) is a genetic generalized epilepsy syndrome. Under appropriate antiepileptic drugs (AED) up to 85% of patients become seizure-free, but many may have a relapse after AED withdrawal. METHODS We retrospectively studied 242 patients with JME at the Department of Neurology, Medical University Innsbruck, Austria (1975-2006). We analyzed age at seizure ...

A 58-year-old man was admitted after a generalized tonic-clonic seizure. The neurological examination was normal, except for bilateral periorbital, enoral and superior thoracic petechiae, which had only occurred after the seizure. The blood pressure, CT scan of the brain and routine laboratory were unremarkable. Seizure-related petechial rash is a rare finding that might be helpful for the diag...

PURPOSE To evaluate the efficacy, tolerability, and effects on behavior and psychosocial functioning of lamotrigine monotherapy in children with newly diagnosed typical absence seizures. PATIENTS AND METHODS Children meeting enrollment criteria (n=54) received a confirmatory 24-h ambulatory electroencephalogram (EEG) and then entered a Escalation Phase of up to 20-weeks during which lamotrigi...