Public health reports
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Public health reports · Jul 1983
Comparative StudyRoutine EEG vs. intensive monitoring in the evaluation of intractable epilepsy.
Appropriate treatment of patients with intractable seizures requires precise identification of the type (or types) of seizure the patient experiences and correlation of this information with data from electroencephalography localizing the focus of the seizure in the brain. For such patients, the technique of "intensive monitoring" has gained rapid acceptance in the past several years as the investigative method of choice. Intensive monitoring usually entails prolonged electroencephalographic recording with simultaneous videotaping of the patient. ⋯ Intensive monitoring revealed that 60 percent of patients for whom the routine EEG study had recorded only one seizure type actually suffered from two or more types. Clinical diagnosis was changed in 84 percent of the patients. In this study, intensive monitoring was found to be far superior to the routine EEG examination as an aid to precise diagnosis of intractable seizure disorders.