Transient epileptic amnesia: a description of the clinical and neuropsychological features in 10 cases and a review of the literature

Zeman, Adam

doi:10.1093/neucas/6.3.230

Cited by 66 publications

(148 citation statements)

References 19 publications

(26 reference statements)

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“…Ramsay, in a recent review of epilepsy in the elderly (14), asserted that clinical mani- festations of partial seizures differ from those seen in younger patients, possibly because of the extratemporal foci seen more often in the elderly. Transient epileptic amnesia may represent a different manifestation of complex partial seizures (15). Further studies of the clinical semiology of epileptic and psychogenic seizures will help to clarify these issues.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Video‐EEG Monitoring in the Elderly: A Review of 94 Patients

2002

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Summary:Purpose: We sought to determine the utility and results of video-EEG monitoring in elderly patients. There is an increased incidence of epilepsy in the elderly population. Few studies have assessed the characteristics of epileptic and nonepileptic seizures in this age group. Diagnostic evaluation with video-EEG monitoring is a means to distinguish these different types of events.Methods: The authors reviewed all patients aged 60 years and older who were admitted to the epilepsy monitoring unit at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center from January 21, 1991, to April 12, 1999.Results: A total of 94 patients and 99 patient admissions were identified, accounting for 8% of all admissions. The average age was 70 years, and the mean length of stay was 3.8 days. Typical events were recorded in 75 of the 99 patient admissions. A total of 118 seizures was recorded in 46 patients, and 98 nonepileptic events were seen in 27 patients. Of the patients with nonepileptic events, 13 had psychogenic seizures. The majority of patients with nonepileptic events were taking antiepileptic medication. Whereas 76% of the patients with epileptic events had interictal epileptiform discharges, 26% of the patients with nonepileptic events had epileptiform discharges as well.Conclusions: Video-EEG monitoring in the elderly leads to a definitive diagnosis in the majority of patients in a relatively short time. Interictal recordings are inadequate in determining the nature of paroxysmal events. Nonepileptic events are common in the elderly, including psychogenic seizures, and these are often misdiagnosed and mistreated as epileptic seizures.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Video‐EEG Monitoring in the Elderly: A Review of 94 Patients

2002

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“…The phenomenon suggests an impairment of memory consolidation processes. Although no single reason has been identified to explain this problem, several possible causes have been suggested (Zeman 1998;Blake 2000;Butler 2007Butler , 2008): Autobiographical amnesia is a neurogenic retrograde amnesia that involves the loss of memories of salient personal events experienced in previous decades.…”

Section: Neurocognitive Problems In Epilepsymentioning

confidence: 99%

Neurocognitive problems in epilepsy

Lodhi¹,

Agrawal²

2012

Adv. psychiatr. treat

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SummaryCognitive dysfunction is one of the major contributors to the burden of epilepsy. It can significantly disrupt intellectual development in children and functional status and quality of life in adults. Epilepsy affects cognition through a number of mechanisms in complex interrelationship. Cognitive deficits in epilepsy may be treated indirectly through aggressive seizure control using anti-epileptic drugs or surgery, and by treating comorbid conditions such as depression. The beneficial effects of reducing seizures may offset the adverse cognitive side-effects of these therapies. Direct treatment of cognitive impairment in epilepsy mainly involves memory rehabilitation. Other direct treatments are mostly experimental and their evidence base is currently poor.

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“…Beyond complex partial seizures, other seizure subtypes such as transient epileptic amnesia (where the patients experience memory problems reminiscent of dementia for repeated short time periods) may also be underestimated (21,22). Considering all of the above considerations, it remains doubtful whether convulsive seizures represent the majority of seizure types in AD.…”

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confidence: 99%

Seizures in Alzheimer Disease: Clinical and Epidemiological Data

2012

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Epilepsy and AD are common neurologic disorders for which increasing age is a common and well-established risk factor (1, 2). The potential relation between these two disorders has been supported by experimental and clinical data. From a clinical aspect, patients with AD have an increased risk of developing seizures and epilepsy; thus AD may be an important cause of epilepsy in the elderly. AD and other neurodegenerative conditions represent the presumed etiology for 10% of new onset epilepsy in patients older than 65 (3).The diagnosis of seizures in patients with AD is not always easy because the manifestation of partial seizures might be hard to recognize and distinguish from other behaviors common in these patients. This may lead to underestimation of the real frequency of seizures in AD. At the same time, the possibility that "funny" or "unusual" behaviors of demented patients are considered seizures, particularly by nonepileptologists, may lead to overestimation of seizure rates.We briefly review and comment on studies reporting on the risk of seizures in AD, the possible factors modifying this risk, the role of EEG in the diagnosis of epilepsy and its limitations, the efficacy of antiepileptic drugs and the relationship between seizures and interictal epileptiform activity and AD course. Risk of Seizures in ADCompared with healthy individuals of the same age, patients with sporadic AD have a 6-to 10-fold increased risk of developing clinical seizures during the course of their illness (4-6). There are many prospective and retrospective studies reporting great variability in the lifetime prevalence of seizures in patients with AD, with rates ranging from 1.5 to 64 percent (5-17). However, it is difficult to accurately assess the real prevalence of seizures in AD because of methodological problems in published epidemiologic and observational studies. The studies in which there is pathologic confirmation of AD have small numbers of subjects, with considerable variability in disease duration and severity. Some prospective and retrospective studies have included other forms of dementia and patients with additional symptomatic causes of epilepsy, such stroke or hemorrhage. Two recent prospective cohort studies with large numbers of patients with long follow-up and carefully characterized evaluations estimate the overall incidence of seizures in AD at approximately 1 per 200 person-years of observation, suggesting relatively lower frequencies than other studies (17, 18).There are studies in the elderly reporting recurrence risk after the first seizure as high as 80%, probably because the epilepsy in the elderly population is mainly associated with an underlying structural lesion (15). In AD patients, many of the studies do not distinguish the presence of a single unprovoked seizure from recurrent seizures, namely, epilepsy. To our knowledge, there are no large studies reporting the risk of recurrence of seizures after the first unprovoked seizure in AD, except for few case series that include a small number of Se...

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Transient epileptic amnesia: a description of the clinical and neuropsychological features in 10 cases and a review of the literature

Abstract: (J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 1998;64:435-443)

Cited by 66 publications

References 19 publications

Video‐EEG Monitoring in the Elderly: A Review of 94 Patients

Video‐EEG Monitoring in the Elderly: A Review of 94 Patients

Neurocognitive problems in epilepsy

Seizures in Alzheimer Disease: Clinical and Epidemiological Data

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