[UTILITY OF INPATIENT LONG TERM VIDEO EEG MONITORING]

Ambulatory interictal EEG cannot always clarify the nature of spells in patients with suspected epilepsy. Long term Video EEG Monitoring can help to diagnose the nature of recurrent attacks, classify epileptic seizures and aid with the localization of seizures in preoperative epilepsy surgery candidates.

The aim of this study was to investigate the usefulness of performing long term video EEG monitoring in patients undergoing this test in Rambam's epilepsy unit.

This study is a retrospective study that included all consecutive patients undergoing monitoring in our unit from January 2001 to July 2009. Demographic, clinical and monitoring results were collected retrospectively from the patients' files.

A total of 722 consecutive monitorings with a total of 637 patients were included in the study. Epileptic seizures were observed in 194 patients (30.5%), non-epileptic events were observed in 220 patients (34.5%), epileptic seizures and psychogenic non-epileptic seizures were observed in ten patients (1.6% ), no events were observed in 200 patients (31.4%) and in 13 patients (2%) we could not determine the nature of the attacks.

Long term video EEG monitoring is highly efficient. In order to maintain its efficacy or even improve it, mainly patients with high seizure frequency should be referred to this test. Due to the low availability of this test in northern Israel, in our opinion, there is a room to expand this service.