Value of inpatient diagnostic CCTV-EEG monitoring in the elderly.
OBJECTIVE
To examine the outcome of inpatient diagnostic closed circuit TV-EEG (CCTV-EEG) monitoring in a consecutive series of elderly patients admitted to an adult epilepsy-monitoring unit (EMU) over a continuous 6-year period.


METHODS
Retrospective review of all admissions to a university hospital adult EMU. Those older than 60 years were identified. Patients who were monitored for status epilepticus were excluded. Data on duration of events, frequency of events, physical examination, medications, preadmission EEG, brain imaging, length of stay, and interictal and ictal EEG were obtained.


RESULTS
Of the 18 patients admitted for monitoring only, mean age was 69.5 years (range, 60-90 years). Mean length of stay was 4.3 days (range, 2-9 days). Five patients had complex partial seizures recorded. Three patients, all treated with anti-epileptic drugs (AEDs), had no spells recorded, and no additional diagnostic information was gained from the admission. The other 10 patients, eight of whom had been treated with AEDs, were symptomatic during their admission, leading to a variety of neurologic but not epileptic, psychiatric, or other medical disorders, and allowing tapering of AEDs.


CONCLUSIONS
In elderly patients with suspected epilepsy, CCTV-EEG is a very useful diagnostic tool. In this series of 18, 10 patients were diagnosed with potentially treatable medical illnesses not responsive to AEDs.
Drury
I
I
Epilepsy Program and Clinical Neurophysiology Laboratories, University of Michigan Medical Center, Ann Arbor, USA.
Selwa
L M
LM
Schuh
L A
LA
Kapur
J
J
Varma
N
N
Beydoun
A
A
Henry
T R
TR
D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000927:Anticonvulsants / Q000627:therapeutic use; D003937:Diagnosis, Differential; D004569:Electroencephalography / Q000379:methods*; D004827:Epilepsy / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000188:drug therapy; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006760:Hospitalization; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D008991:Monitoring, Physiologic; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D013690:Television
D000927:Anticonvulsants