Epilepsy & behavior : E&B
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Epilepsy & behavior : E&B · Apr 2008
Clinical Trial Controlled Clinical TrialIntravenous levetiracetam: treatment experience with the first 50 critically ill patients.
Levetiracetam (LEV) is a broad-spectrum antiepileptic drug with no known interactions and a favorable profile of adverse events. These properties make it a good candidate for use in critically ill patients. An intravenous formulation of LEV was recently approved. ⋯ Two patients (4%) had transiently lowered platelet counts (55,000 and 82,000, respectively). Efficacy, defined as cessation of seizure activity or prevention of its recurrence, was observed in 41 of 50 patients (82%). Antiepileptic treatment of critically ill patients with LEV seems to be effective and safe according to the data for this small cohort, but this observation warrants further prospective investigation in a larger number of patients.
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Epilepsy & behavior : E&B · Jan 2008
Comprehensive presurgical functional MRI language evaluation in adult patients with epilepsy.
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has the potential to replace the intracarotid amobarbital procedure (IAP) in presurgical evaluation of patients with epilepsy. In this study, we compared fMRI verb generation (VG) and semantic decision/tone decision (SDTD) tasks and the IAP in their ability to localize language functions in patients with epilepsy undergoing presurgical evaluation. We enrolled 50 healthy controls to establish normal language activation patterns for VG and SDTD tasks at 3 or 4 T, and to design language regions of interest (ROIs) that were later applied to 38 patients with epilepsy (28 of 38 also underwent the IAP). ⋯ In the general linear modeling, only the SDTD task significantly contributed to the determination of language lateralization in patients with epilepsy undergoing presurgical evaluation. Results indicate a moderate convergent validity between both fMRI language tasks and between IAP and fMRI tasks. The results of this study indicate that either of these fMRI tasks can be used for language lateralization in patients with epilepsy undergoing presurgical evaluation, but that the SDTD task is likely to provide more information regarding language lateralization than the VG task.
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Epilepsy & behavior : E&B · Nov 2007
Case ReportsPregabalin-induced generalized myoclonic status epilepticus in patients with chronic pain.
Pregabalin is often used for the treatment of chronic pain syndromes. We here describe two patients with chronic pain and pregabalin-induced myoclonic status epilepticus. Patients treated with pregabalin who experience sudden behavioral changes or mycloni should be investigated for this possible side effect, and pregabalin should be reduced or discontinued if myocloni or status epilepticus occurs.
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Epilepsy & behavior : E&B · Sep 2007
Parents of children with enduring epilepsy: predictors of parenting stress and parenting.
The goals of the work described here were (1) to predict parenting stress and parenting from stressors, resources, and parental coping behaviors in parents of children with epilepsy, and (2) to determine whether parenting stress mediates the effects of these predictors on parenting. ⋯ In the context of pediatric epilepsy, parenting stress mediates both disruptive and resilient family factors for their effects on parenting. Parents of children with epilepsy may benefit from parent training programs that, to reduce parenting stress, address epilepsy education, the management of difficult child temperament, building social support networks, and the modification of inadequate parental coping behaviors.
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Epilepsy & behavior : E&B · Aug 2007
Reliability and validity of a Chinese version of the Quality of Life in Epilepsy Inventory (QOLIE-89).
The aim of the work described here was to develop and validate a Chinese version of the Quality of Life in Epilepsy Inventory-89 (QOLIE-89). ⋯ The psychometric properties of the Chinese version of the QOLIE-89 are good and similar to those of the American version and can be applied to assess quality of life in adult patients with epilepsy in China.