Abstracts

Rationale: Juvenile myoclonic epilepsy (JME) counts 10% in the adult epilepsy population, and its treatment is not as difficult in most cases once it is diagnosed. However, its underestimation and maltreatment still remain as problems leading to its treatment somewhat intractable. This particular issue has long been discussed in several papers, but it seems that the cause of discrimination differs from time to time, countries to countries. In this paper, we reviewed our Japanese JME cases to consider the factor of JME non-diagnoses.Methods: 28 cases of our JME cases, which have previous treatment history in other institution, were analyzed.Results: 4 out of 28 was diagnosed as JME previously, 7 out of 28 were diagnosed either JME or iGE. 7 out of 28 were treated with the AEDs known to cause paradoxical intoxication. EEG was performed in all cases, and in 22 out of 28, S-W complex or other findings of iGE was found at the initial EEG. In several cases of JME non-diagnosed, typical sign of ‘ short duration of seizure’ ‘ drop off the chopsticks in the morning time’ are described, but these findings were not associated with myoclonus till the end. In 27 out of 28, the physician had a board certification of either neurology/neurosurgery/psychiatry/pediatrics, which is neurology subspecialty.Conclusions: It is considered that educating JME, together with the typical clinical features as well as myoclonus and EEG findings, to those ‘neurology specialists’, are inevitable in Japan, in order to avoid maltreatment of JME.