title: Short duration outpatient video electroencephalographic monitoring: the experience of a southern-Italian general pediatric department.
abstract: The authors assessed the event detection rate and clinical usefulness of short duration, outpatient video electroencephalographic monitoring (VEM), in the pediatric age group. The duration of monitoring was set at a two-hour period. One hundred consecutive patients aged 0-18 years were enrolled in the study. Patients belonged to one of the following groups: A) patients evaluated to differentiate between true epileptic seizures and nonepileptic events; B) patients with known epilepsy evaluated for a better definition of their seizure type; C) patients with isolated EEG abnormalities evaluated to identify unrecognised, subtle seizures. An additional group D, included patients with enhancement of spike activity induced by sleep. Eighty- seven patients experienced at least one event per week and 13% had less than one event weekly. The event detection rate was 53% overall, and 61% in the first group of 87 patients. In patients who had events recorded and characterized, epileptic seizures were identified in 37 children (69.8%), and non-epileptic events in 19 children (35.8%). Diagnostic yield was especially high in children with mental retardation who had predominantly non-epileptic events. VEM was judged successful and/or informative in 73 cases (73%), and turned out to be useful even in patients with a low baseline frequency of clinical events.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pediatrics, Child Neuropsychiatry Unit, Federico II University, Naples, Italy. endelgui@unina.it
authors.forename: Ennio
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Del Giudice
authors.forename: Angela Francesca
authors.initials: AF
authors.lastname: Crisanti
authors.forename: Alfonso
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Romano
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000553:Ambulatory Care; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004569:Electroencephalography; D004827:Epilepsy / Q000150:complications / Q000175:diagnosis*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D008607:Intellectual Disability / Q000150:complications; D008297:Male; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D014743:Videotape Recording