Day Time Long Term EEG Follow-up

Abstract

The rate of pathological routine EEG in epileptic patients is (not that high) low. In some instances, day time long term EEG or night time long term EEG may be needed in order to increase the rate of EEG abnormality. In this study, we evaluated consecutive 330 daytime long term EEG (DLT-EEG) and spontaneous sleep EEG (mean duration : 3 and half hours) recorded in Dokuz Eylül University Neurology Department, Neurophsiology Unit, EEG laboratory, between the dates of February 1999 and September 2000. One hundred twenty EEG recordings of 103 patients were reported as abnormal. When that group with DLT-EEG abnormality was evaluated retrospectively; their routine EEG gave abnormality on 45 recordings of 40 patients, however no abnormality was found in 85 routine EEG recordings of 63 patients. We evaluated and compared seizure types, seizure frequency, and EEG recording stage in which epileptiform abnormality appeared in two groups of patients, one group with normal routine EEG and abnormal DLT-EEG (n=63)and the second group with both routine EEG and DLT-EEG abnormality.