Manifestation of both emetic seizures and sylvian seizures in the same patients with benign partial epilepsy

Benign childhood epilepsy with centro-temporal spikes (BECTS) and Panayiotopoulos syndrome (PS) have different pathophysiologies and show different types of seizures, yet they overlap in some important respects. In an attempt to understand the ways in which they differ from each other and overlap each other, we performed a detailed investigation on patients who had both characteristic types of seizure manifestations, namely, sylvian seizures and emetic seizures.

We recruited consecutive subjects from the EEG database of outpatients who had visited our hospital between 2008 and 2010 and who had been diagnosed with BECTS or PS. As a result, 45 patients with BECTS and 50 patients with PS were selected from the database. Viewing the clinical records of these 95 patients, five patients were selected who had experienced both sylvian seizures and emetic seizures. Next, the clinical features and EEG findings of these five patients were retrospectively observed at the date of investigation: October 1, 2011.

We found that all the patients showed rolandic spikes when they had sylvian seizures, and occipital spikes or multifocal spikes when they had emetic seizures. We also report in detail on one patient who showed two different types of ictal EEG patterns: one of which started in the occipital area and the other of which was located in the rolandic area.

Based on these findings, we conclude that widespread cortical hyperexcitability that includes the occipital area is necessary to produce the autonomic seizure manifestations seen in PS.