Abstracts

Rationale: Non-epileptic events are a common finding in pediatric patients admitted to an epilepsy monitoring unit (EMU), but few reports characterizing prevalence and patient characteristics are available in the literature. We evaluate the prevalence and characteristics of patients with non-epileptic events admitted to the EMU. Methods: A random sample of patients admitted to the EMU for continuous video EEG at Cook Children's Medical Center from January 2006-September 2011 was retrospectively reviewed and data collected, including age, gender, and type of non-epileptic event. The type of non-epileptic event was characterized as motor manifestations, mental status change, apparent loss of consciousness, and isolated staring. Results: Three hundred and sixty-two of 12,844 (2.8%) patients admitted to the EMU during the time period under study were randomly reviewed. Ninety-nine (27.4%) patients experienced one or more non-epileptic events and 23 (23%) had both epileptic and non-epileptic events. Demographics for each group are presented in Table 1. Amongst patients with nonepileptic events, semiologies with motor manifestations were observed more often (χ2=55.121, p<.001), occurring in 42.4% of the patients. Staring events occurred in 21.2%, mental status changes 8.1%, dizziness 7.1%, unclassified manifestations 9.1% or any combination thereof 12.1%. Conclusions: The prevalence of non-epileptic events in children admitted to our EMU appears to be similar to those reported in adult EMUs. When non-epileptic events are present, they are more often characterized by motor manifestations. Gender and age do not appear to be predictors of non-epileptic event occurrence.