Abstracts

Rationale: Post COVID-19 neurologic complications have been reported since the COVID-19 pandemic. The possible mechanisms of the association between the COVID-19 infection and seizures have been discussed in Epilepsia 2020; 61(9); 1840-1853. This study aims to examine the clinical characteristics of patients with seizures and concomitant COVID-19 infection at the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC).

Methods: We collected patients with seizures and a diagnosis of COVID-19 during the same encounter, by using Patient Cohort Explorer (a de-identified patient database without age over 89 compiled from UMMC’s Research Data Warehouse) from 12/1/2019 to 3/31/2022. A descriptive analysis was performed to summarize the characteristics of these selected patients.

Results: A total of 625 selected patients were analyzed; 484 of them were older than 16 years. Of the total, 311 (49.8%) were female and 408 (65.3%) were African American. Age ranged from 0 to 89 years with a median age of 47 years; the mean age was 42.5 (± 25.7) years. Less than half of the patients (260/625, 41.6%) were never smokers. 574 (91.8%) patients needed hospital admission, with a length of stay ranging from 0 to 243 days (median 6 days). There were 19 (3%) patients developing status epilepticus; and 71 (11.4%) deaths at discharge. A higher mortality rate (68/484, 14.1%) was seen in the subgroup of patients older than age 16.

Conclusions: This preliminary study first described the clinical characteristics of patients with concurrent seizures and COVID-19 infection from Mississippi. The in-patient mortality rate (71/574, 12.4%) in our study is lower than the mortality rate published in Neurology 2020; 95(10); e1417-e1425, which was 23.8% in patients with active epilepsy and COVID-19 infection. Additional studies are warranted involving broader medical record review to explore the association between COVID-19 infection and seizures.

Funding: Not applicable