Elucidating the visual phenomena in epilepsy: A mini review.

Epilepsy is one of the most recognizable neurological diseases, globally. Epilepsy may be accompanied by various complications, including vision impairments, which may severely impact one's quality of life. These visual phenomena may occur in the preictal, ictal and/or postictal periods of seizures. Examples of epilepsy associated visual phenomena include visual aura, visual hallucinations, transient visual loss and amaurosis (blindness). These ophthalmologic signs/symptoms of epilepsy may be temporary or permanent and may vary depending of the type of epilepsy and location of the seizure foci (occipital or temporal lobe). Some visual phenomena may even be utilized to diagnose the epilepsy type, although solely depending on visual symptoms for diagnosis may lead to mistreatment. Some antiseizure medications (ASMs) may also contribute to certain visual disturbances, thereby impacting its therapeutic efficiency for patients with epilepsy (PWE). Although the development of visual comorbidities has been observed diversely among PWE, there may still be a lack of understanding on their relevance and manifestation in epilepsy, which may contribute to the rate of misdiagnosis and the current scarcity in therapeutic relieve. Therefore, this mini narrative review aimed to discuss the common epilepsy associated visual phenomena, based on the available literature. This review also showcased the relationship between the type of visual complications and the site of seizure onset, as well as compared the visual phenomena between occipital lobe epilepsy and temporal lobe epilepsy. Evaluation of these findings may be crucial in reducing the risk of permanent seizure/epilepsy related vision deficits among PWE.

Comparison of the burnout among medical residents before and during the pandemic.

OBJECTIVE: This study aims to compare the level of burnout syndrome in medical residents before and during the COVID-19 pandemic and identify potential risk factors. METHODS: This cross-sectional study was conducted on medical residents from three different university hospitals in Turkey in March 2021, one year after the pandemic hit Turkey. Burnout is measured by the Maslach Burnout Inventory which assesses three dimensions of it: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal accomplishment. Collected data were combined and compared with data from a previous study which was held in the same hospitals in December 2019, three months before the pandemic. RESULTS: 412 medical residents from three universities participated. The mean age was 27.8 ± 2.4 and half of them were female. Compared to pre-pandemic levels, no significant differences in emotional exhaustion (pre:19.0 ± 7.6 post:18.8 ± 7.8), depersonalization (pre:7.3 ± 4.3 post:7.2 ± 4.4), and personal accomplishment (pre:20.8 ± 5.1 post:21.1 ± 5) scores were observed one year after pandemic. Adjusting for confounders, multiple linear regression models indicated that who are female, are in surgical specialty, have vulnerable cohabitant, and have more night shifts faces higher emotional exhaustion. Depersonalisation is higher among who spent more years in residency, have more night shifts, or COVID-19 outpatient duty. Females and those who have vulnerable cohabitant has lower levels of Personal Achievement. CONCLUSION: This study does not support the hypothesis that pandemic increases the burnout levels. Yet it identifies a couple of pandemic related factors that are associated with burnout and confirming the association of several previously known factors.