How much time is enough? Establishing an optimal duration of recording for ambulatory video EEG.

OBJECTIVE: Ambulatory video EEG allows for extended recording of EEG in the comfort of a patient's home. However, the optimal duration of recording to capture clinical events is yet to be established. The current study uses retrospective analyses to identify an optimal recording duration for at-home video EEG. METHODS: A retrospective review was performed utilizing an anonymized database of ambulatory video EEG recordings performed between March and September 2020 with a national in-home EEG provider. Only completed assessments with neurologists' reads of raw data were reviewed, resulting in 3644 unique studies divided into three age cohorts: pediatrics (n = 941), adult (n = 2020), and geriatric (n = 683). Cohorts were characterized by assessment yield and time to first typical clinical event, as well as subsequent typical events over duration of recording. RESULTS: Frequency distributions reveal over half of first events are captured within 12 hours, but longer recording durations capture a much wider majority of both first typical events, as well as the mean number of subsequent events (5 clinical events). In 72 hours, over 97% of first events were observed in adult and geriatric patients, as well as over 95% of the mean number of subsequent events. In children, time to first event was significantly earlier than either adult or geriatric samples, with 98% of first events, and 92.8% of the mean number of subsequent events being observed in 48 hours. SIGNIFICANCE: These results from a large-scale, national dataset of patients using in-home EEG monitoring suggests recording at least 48 hours in duration for children, and at least 72 hours in duration for adult and geriatric samples, is optimal to maximize the likelihood of observing typical clinical events to facilitate diagnosis.

Pyridoxine deficiency in adult patients with status epilepticus.

An 8-year-old girl treated at our facility for superrefractory status epilepticus was found to have a low pyridoxine level at 5 µg/L. After starting pyridoxine supplementation, improvement in the EEG for a 24-hour period was seen. We decided to look at the pyridoxine levels in adult patients admitted with status epilepticus. We reviewed the records on patients admitted to the neurological ICU for status epilepticus (SE). Eighty-one adult patients were identified with documented pyridoxine levels. For comparison purposes, we looked at pyridoxine levels in outpatients with epilepsy (n=132). Reported normal pyridoxine range is >10 ng/mL. All but six patients admitted for SE had low normal or undetectable pyridoxine levels. A selective pyridoxine deficiency was seen in 94% of patients with status epilepticus (compared to 39.4% in the outpatients) which leads us to believe that there is a relationship between status epilepticus and pyridoxine levels.

Suicide risk and sexual orientation: a critical review.

Many studies have reported higher rates of suicide attempts among sexual minority individuals compared with their heterosexual counterparts. For suicides, however, it has been argued that there is no sexual orientation risk difference, based on the results of psychological autopsy studies. The purpose of this article was to clarify the reasons for the seemingly discrepant findings for suicide attempts and suicides. First, we reviewed studies that investigated if the increased suicide attempt risk of sexual minorities resulted from biased self-reports or less rigorous assessments of suicide attempts. Second, we reanalyzed the only two available case-control autopsy studies and challenge their original "no difference" conclusion by pointing out problems with the interpretation of significance tests and by applying Bayesian statistics and meta-analytical procedures. Third, we reviewed register based and clinical studies on the association of suicides and sexual orientation. We conclude that studies of both suicide attempts and suicides do, in fact, point to an increased suicide risk among sexual minorities, thus solving the discrepancy. We also discuss methodological challenges inherent in research on sexual minorities and potential ethical issues. The arguments in this article are necessary to judge the weight of the evidence and how the evidence might be translated into practice.