Abstracts

Rationale: We investigated the prevalence, demographic and clinical characteristics of psychogenic nonepileptic seizures (PNES) in patients at the epilepsy clinic in a private community hospital in Dubai. Methods: In this retrospective study, a total of 281 patient's EEG and Long Term Monitoring (LTM) were reviewed. All patients with a clinical diagnosis of PNES (based on ictal recordings) were reviewed at the outpatient Epilepsy clinic and inpatient Epilepsy Center at Dr Sulaiman Al Habib, Medical Center, from February 2016 through March 2018. The age ranged from 10 years to 50 years. We investigated the demographic and clinical characteristics of PNES. Results: Out of 204 EEG recording for one hour in outpatient clinic, 5 were diagnosed as having PNES. Out of 77 patients who were admitted for video-EEG recordings for more than 24 hours, 9 (11.6 %) were diagnosed as having PNES solely, and 2 (2.5 %) patients had both PNES and Epilepsy, for a total of 14 (6.8%) patients diagnosed with PNES. 12 (75%) patients were female and 4(25%) were male. There were no significant differences between our patients and previous reports regarding the clinical and semiological characteristics of PNES. Conclusions: Psychogenic nonepileptic seizures are relatively common in Epilepsy Centers. The incidence of PNES in Dubai is different than described in the literature possibly due to unique cultural, demographic and economic variants of Dubai. Funding: None