• Aron T Hill, Belinda A Briggs, and Udaya Seneviratne.
• *Neuroscience Department, The Alfred Hospital, Melbourne, Australia; and †Department of Neuroscience, Monash University and Monash Medical Centre, Melbourne, Australia.
• J Clin Neurophysiol. 2014 Jun 1; 31 (3): 203-7.

PurposeTo investigate the usefulness of adjunctive electromyographic (EMG) polygraphy in the diagnosis of clinical events captured during long-term video-EEG monitoring.MethodsA total of 40 patients (21 women, 19 men) aged between 19 and 72 years (mean 43) investigated using video-EEG monitoring were studied. Electromyographic activity was simultaneously recorded with EEG in four patients selected on clinical grounds. In these patients, surface EMG electrodes were placed over muscles suspected to be activated during a typical clinical event.ResultsOf the 40 patients investigated, 24 (60%) were given a diagnosis, whereas 16 (40%) remained undiagnosed. All four patients receiving adjunctive EMG polygraphy obtained a diagnosis, with three of these diagnoses being exclusively reliant on the EMG recordings. Specifically, one patient was diagnosed with propriospinal myoclonus, another patient was diagnosed with facio-mandibular myoclonus, and a third patient was found to have bruxism and periodic leg movements of sleep.ConclusionsThe information obtained from surface EMG recordings aided the diagnosis of clinical events captured during video-EEG monitoring in 7.5% of the total cohort. This study suggests that EEG-EMG polygraphy may be used as a technique of improving the diagnostic yield of video-EEG monitoring in selected cases.

17 keywords...

hide…