Conventional and rapid stimulation evoked potential changes in patients with status epilepticus

We utilized somatosensory evoked potentials to evaluate 33 patients with status epilepticus who did not have focal neurological etiologies. Eighteen percent of the patients had conventional stimulation evoked potential abnormalities at or above the P14 lemniscal level. Evoked potential abnormalities in this population showed a statistically significant correlation with a poor outcome including patients that died or required dependent care following hospital discharge. Rapid stimulation somatosensory evoked potential testing is a new technology which may be useful to detect more subtle central nervous system injury and was successfully utilized in the acute setting. Combined conventional and rapid stimulation evoked potentials demonstrated that 30% of these patients had abnormal findings. The results demonstrate that a significant percentage of status epilepticus patients have somatosensory evoked potential abnormalities and suggest that conventional and rapid stimulation somatosensory evoked potentials may be useful predictive indicators for predicting outcome and mortality in this condition.