Adult Lennox Gastaut syndrome: features and diagnostic problems

A series of 25 adults with Lennox Gastaut syndrome is described, with special reference to the occurrence of clinical features resembling complex partial seizures. The majority of the patients showed seizure patterns that at one time or another had been mistaken for temporal lobe epilepsy. The use of video-monitoring to make the definitive diagnosis in this condition becomes most important when the true inaccuracy of eyewitness descriptions of seizure patterns becomes evident, and the implications for the patient of the refractory nature of the tonic seizure is also revealed. This aspect of Lennox Gastaut syndrome does not seem to have been emphasized in series dealing with younger patients and it may well be that adult patients tend to display these characteristics which render diagnosis more difficult.