Abstracts

Rationale: Hyperventilation is an effective and frequent method used both to trigger generalized absence seizures during routine EEG recording and facilitate different kinds of seizures during long term video-EEG monitoring. In this study, it is aimed to demonstrate the efficacy of hyperventilation in long term video-EEG monitoring unit and to evaluate the results in different kinds of seizures. Methods: The records of 326 patients who were monitorized between January 2008 and February 2011 in HUTF video-EEG monitoring unit were reviewed retrospectively. The demographic features and the types of seizures and epilepsy syndromes of the patients who had seizures during hyperventilation were evaluated. Results: In 64 patients who have done hyperventilation, 18.75 % had seizures during hyperventilation. The mean admission days of the patients with seizures during hyperventilation was 5.3 days,without seizures was 7.7 days. Furthermore, 75 % of the patients had temporal lobe seizures, 16.7% of them extratemporal lobe seizures and 8.3% of them had myoclonic seizures. In patients without seizures during hyperventilation, 65.4% of them had temporal lob seizures, 19.2 % had extratemporal seizures, 1.9% had generalized seizures and 1.9 % had nonepileptic psychogenic seizures. Seizure type couldn't be determined in 11.6% of the patients. Conclusions: Seizures can be induced with hyperventilation in 1/5 of the patients during video-EEG monitoring. The method is more effective in patients with temporal lob epilepsy. The activation methods like hyperventilation, shortens admission days in hospital and decreases the hospital costs.