[The application of evoked potentials to the evolutive control of continuous spike/wave epilepsy during slow wave...

We studied 4 patients (14-21 years old) with continuous spike/wave epilepsy during slow wave sleep with visual evoked potentials (VEP) and somatosensory evoked potentials (SEP). All the patients presented the same focality and received the same medication (primidone plus sodium valproate). No case had another pathology not related with epilepsy which could alter the evoked potential findings. The results obtained in the initial evoked potentials were compared with those achieved after 5 years of treatment. In the initial study interhemispheric asymmetry in the latency of the early component (L.N1) of the SEP was observed with a mean of 10%. Five years later normal SEP were obtained with the asymmetry having disappeared thus leading to the deduction that the physiopathologic improvement found in these patients was due to the treatment of sodium valproate together with primidone.