Abstracts

Rationale: Electroencephalography (EEG) recordings after sleep deprivation increase the diagnostic yield in patients suspected of epilepsy if the routine EEG remains inconclusive. Sleep deprivation (SD) is associated with increased interictal EEG abnormalities in patients with epilepsy, but the exact mechanism is unknown. The aim of this study is to investigate benefit of sleep deprivation EEG (SD-EEG) in patients with normal routine EEG. Methods: Among the 455 patients with epilepsy were analyzed retrospectively at our hospital between December 2012 and May 2014. The patients who had SD-EEG and normal routine EEG were included in and the patients who had abnormal routine EEG results and/or had not SD-EEG results were excluded from our study. 48 patients (27 female, 21 male) (%10,5) were appropriate to these criteria. SD-EEG consisted in SD from 2:00 AM and laboratory EEG from 8:00 AM to 10:30 AM. Results: Thirty of patients had normal SD-EEG results (62,5%) (12 female, 18 male) and 18 of patients had abnormal SD-EEG results as epileptiform discharges (37,5%)(15 female, 3 male). There was no statistical difference of age (p=0,37), the presence of history of trauma (p=0,23), history of febrile seizure (p=0,067), family history (p=0,9), seizure frequency (p=0,25), seizure type (focal or generalize)(p=0,44) and cranial MRI findings (p=0,13) between SD-EEG normal and abnormal groups. The gender difference between two groups were significant (p=0,003), the SD-EEG abnormality was common in female group. However, SD-EEG normality was common in male group. Conclusions: Our study does not support the benefit of SD-EEG for detecting epileptiform abnormalities as the recent studies. However, we find that males are more insensitive to SD-EEG than females.