Abstracts

Rationale: Psychogenic non epileptic seizures (PNES) constitute a common diagnostic and therapeutic challenge. Prompt identification of these patients would allow timely administration of psychotherapy and psychopharmacology and prevent diagnostic uncertainty and potentially hazardous, ineffective treatments. We attempted to clarify the differences between patients PNES and epileptic seizures (ES). Methods: Patients admitted to the Epilepsy Monitoring Unit (MGH and BMC) and outpatient Epilepsy clinic (DUT) completed questionnaires about their social situation, epilepsy, cognition (MoCA), psychiatric state (Beck s Depression, Beck s Anxiety Inventory), sleep (Sleep Apnea, Epworth Insomnia Scale) and quality of life (QOLIE-31). AED levels, EEG recordings and brain MRI scans were obtained. The patients were dichotomized in ES and PNES based on their EEG recordings. Comparison between the two groups was performed using t-test/Mann-Witney test for continuous variables and Chi-Square/Fischer s exact test for categorical variables that were normally/not normally distributed respectively. Results: 77 patients with ES and 17 patients with PNES were enrolled. Comparison between the two groups is depicted in table 1. In summary, there was a statistically significant difference between the gender (55.84% of ES vs 100% of PNES were female, p<0.001), the marital status (55.84% of ES vs 23.53% of PNES were single, p=0.02), the age of onset of epilepsy (16.16 /-11.24 for ES vs 23.76 /-9.83 in PNES, p=0.01), the number of AEDs (68.83% >