EEG quantitative analysis in patients with rolandic epileptiform discharges

THESES

EEG QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS IN PATIENTS WITH ROLANDIC EPILEPTIFORM DISCHARGES. (ABSTRACT)^*. THESIS. SÃO PAULO, 1998.

NADIA IANDOLI DE OLIVEIRA BRAGA ^**

The importance of localization and morphologic features of interictal epileptiform discharges in patients suspected of having epileptic seizures is well known. Rolandic discharges (RD) have been reported in association to benign rolandic epilepsy of childhood (BREC), a common type of epilepsy in children that has well defined clinical features, familiar traces, no neurological lesion and good prognosis. These patients present an EEG with normal background activity on visual analysis. RD, however, may occur in other clinical situations besides BREC. Recent advances in EEG equipments became quantitative analysis both of background activity and epileptiform discharges available. Previous studies using spike averaging reported some morphological features, the occurrence of tangential dipole and "double spike" in RD in association with clinical features and prognosis.

We studied the EEGs of 24 children with RD and made quantitative analysis of background activity and RD, comparing individual discharges with averaged ones, maximal negativity localization, tangential dipole and "double spike" occurrence and clinical associations.

We concluded that background activity has significant differences when compared to normal group, not the same in different ages, not influenced by neurological lesion or use of medication; individual RD can show tangential dipole in as much as 20% and "double spike" in 45% with no occurrence at the averaged spike; central is the main localization, and temporal is more frequent in RD with tangential dipole; in patients with typical BREC, tangential dipole occurred in 76.92% and "double spike" in 53.8%; there were no association between tangential dipole or "double spike" and neurological lesion.

KEY WORDS: electroencephalography, rolandic epilepsy, brain mapping.

*

Análise quantitativa do eletrencefalograma de pacientes com descargas epileptiformes rolândicas (Resumo). Tese de Doutorado, Escola Paulista de Medicina ¾ Universidade Federal de São Paulo, UNIFESP (Área: Neurologia). Orientador: João Antonio Maciel Nóbrega.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  06 Nov 2000
• Date of issue
  Dec 1998