• S C Ponten, H E Ronner, R L M Strijers, M C Visser, S M Peerdeman, W P Vandertop, A Beishuizen, A R J Girbes, and C J Stam.
• Department of Clinical Neurophysiology, VU University Medical Center, PO Box 7057, 1007 MB, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. sc.ponten@vumc.nl
• Seizure. 2010 Nov 1;19(9):580-6.

IntroductionContinuous EEG (cEEG) is of great interest in view of the reported high prevalence of non-convulsive seizures on intensive care units (ICUs). Here, we describe our experiences applying a seizure warning system using cEEG monitoring.MethodsFifty comatose ICU patients were included prospectively and monitored. Twenty-eight patients had post-anoxic encephalopathy (PAE) and 22 had focal brain lesions. A measure of neuronal interactions, synchronization likelihood, was calculated online over 10s EEG epochs and instances when the synchronization likelihood exceeded a threshold where marked as seizures.ResultsFive patients developed seizures. Our method detected seizures in three patients, in the other patients seizures were missed because of they were non-convulsive and had a focal character. The average false positive rate was 0.676/h.DiscussionThis is our first attempt to implement online seizure detection in the ICU. Despite problems with artifacts and that we missed focally oriented seizures, we succeeded in monitoring patients online. Given the relatively high occurrence of seizures, online seizure detection with cEEG merits further development for use in ICUs.Copyright © 2010 British Epilepsy Association. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

19 keywords...

hide…