Abstracts

Rationale: We studied the influence of nocturnal EEG-polysomnography (EEG-PSG) in the management of epilepsies. Methods: We made a prospective cross-sectional study on adult patients referred from the Epilepsy Unit during the last year who underwent a 12 hours nocturnal EEG-PSG. All of them had previous neuroimaging and EEG recordings. Treatments were not modified. To evaluate the usefulness of EEG-PSG, a suspected diagnosis before the examination was then compared to the final diagnosis. We considered as variables for analysis: the epilepsy diagnostic, syndromic classification, epileptogenic source localization and slepp or cardio respiratory associated disorders. The analysis was based on the reason for request. Results: We recruited 69 patients (58% men; age average 47 years, range from 16 to 80). Epilepsy was previously diagnosed in 87% of patients. Syndromically, 53% were partials, 15% generalized and 19% were unclassifiable epilepsies. Cryptogenic epilepsies were 44%. Drug-resistants were 54%. Nearly 12% were considered non-epileptic spells. EEG-PSG was request to diagnose epilepsy in 22 patients. Syndromic classification was achieved in six out of eight patients with unclassified epilepsy. Lobar localization was defined in nine out of 12 previous non-localized epilepsies (p<0,05). Four seizures were recorded among all patients. SAHS were confirmed in 9 of 11 cases (p<0,05). However, an incidence of 38% was observed in patients where SAHS was not previously suspected. Conclusions: One night EEG-PSG has proved to be a useful tool to assess the diagnostic of epilepsy and to detect unsuspected SAHS, before patients undergo further continuous video-EEG monitoring.