[Panic attacks and 24-hour ambulatory EEG monitoring]

A 24 hour ambulatory EEG study performed in a population of 300 non epileptic outpatients with an anxious and depressive pathology revealed a high prevalence of abnormalities in subjects referred with panic disorder. Two groups of 150 medication-free patients each have been selected on the base of DSM-III-R = one with panic attacks (PA), the other with depressive patients without paroxystic anxiety (DS). The results showed respectively = in the PA group 63.2% abnormal, 19.7% normal and 17.1% dubious records. In the DS group = 74.5% normal, 18.3% abnormal and 7.2% dubious records. Epileptiform abnormalities were 4 times more frequent in the PA group (80%) than in the DS group (20%). Two nycthemeral peaks were found (5-8 pm and 3 hours after awakening). MRI has permitted the discovery of abnormal cerebral images in 3 patients of the PA group (cyst of the insula, temporal and parietal cryptic angiomas, sequelae of a parietal vasculo-cerebral stroke) frequency appearing to be clearly superior to the one resulting from recent epidemiologic data. The subclinical character of 2/3 of these abnormalities refers beyond epilepsy to their signification in the field of emotive and intellectual disturbances. The paradoxal efficiency of tricyclic drugs in panic disorder, sets the problem of their eventual antiepileptic action at low doses. If recent data on standard EEG in panic disorder is available, we did not find any similar study to ours in order to confront our results.