scholarly journals Panic symptoms in transient loss of consciousness: Frequency and diagnostic value in psychogenic nonepileptic seizures, epilepsy and syncope

Seizure ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 48 ◽  
pp. 22-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
G.H. Rawlings ◽  
J. Jamnadas-Khoda ◽  
M. Broadhurst ◽  
R.A. Grünewald ◽  
S.J. Howell ◽  
...  
2021 ◽  
Vol 41 (06) ◽  
pp. 667-672
Author(s):  
Ima Ebong ◽  
Zahra Haghighat ◽  
Meriem Bensalem-Owen

AbstractTransient loss of consciousness (TLOC) is a common emergent neurological issue, which can be attributed to syncope, epileptic seizures, and psychogenic nonepileptic seizures. The purpose of this article is to outline an approach to diagnosing the most common etiologies of TLOC by focusing on the importance of the history and physical examination, as well as targeted diagnostic tests.


2021 ◽  
Vol 92 (8) ◽  
pp. A7.1-A7
Author(s):  
Nathan Pevy ◽  
Heidi Christensen ◽  
Traci Walker ◽  
Markus Reuber

BackgroundThere are three common causes of Transient Loss of Consciousness (TLOC), syncope, epileptic and psychogenic nonepileptic seizures (PNES). Many individuals who have experienced TLOC initially receive an incorrect diagnosis and inappropriate treatment. Whereas syncope can be distinguished from the other two causes relatively easily with a small number of yes/no questions, the differentiation of the other two causes of TLOC is more challenging. Previous qualitative research based on the methodology of Conversation Analysis has demonstrated that epileptic and nonepileptic seizures are described differently when patients talk to clinicians about their TLOC experiences. One particularly prominent difference is that epileptic seizure descriptions are characterised by more formulation effort than accounts of nonepileptic seizures.AimThis research investigates whether features likely to reflect the level of formulation effort can be automatically elicited from audio recordings and transcripts of speech and used to differentiate between epileptic and nonepileptic seizures.MethodVerbatim transcripts of conversations between patients and neurologists were manually produced from video and audio recordings of interactions with 45 patients (21 epilepsy and24 PNES). The subsection of each transcript containing the patients account of their first seizure was manually extracted for the analysis. Seven automatically detectable features were designed as markers of formulation effort. These features were used to train a Random Forest machine learning classifier.ResultsThere were significantly more hesitations and repetitions in descriptions of first epileptic than nonepileptic seizures. Using a nested leave-one-out cross validation approach, 71% of seizures were correctly classified by the Random Forest classifier.ConclusionsThis pilot study provides proof of principle that linguistic features that have been automatically extracted from audio recordings and transcripts could be used to distinguish between epileptic seizures and PNES and thereby contribute to the differential diagnosis of TLOC. Future research should explore whether additional observations can be incorporated into a diagnostic stratification tool. Moreover, future research should explore the performance of these features when they have been extracted from transcripts produced by automatic speech recognition and when they are combined with additional information provided by patients and witnesses about seizure manifestations and medical history.


2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivo Casagranda ◽  
Michele Brignole ◽  
Simone Cencetti ◽  
Gianfranco Cervellin ◽  
Giorgio Costantino ◽  
...  

The recommendations enclosed in the present document have been developed by a group of experts appointed by the <em>Gruppo Multidisciplinare per lo Studio della Sincope</em> (Multidisciplinary Group for the Study of Syncope; GIMSI) and Academy of Emergency Medicine and Care (AcEMC). The aim is to define the diagnostic pathway and the management of patients referred to the Emergency Department (ED) for transient loss of consciousness of suspected syncopal cause, which is still unexplained after the initial evaluation. The risk stratification enables the physician to admit, discharge or monitor shortly the patient in the intensive short-stay Syncope Observation Unit (SOU). There are three risk levels of life-threatening events or serious complications (low, moderate, high). Low risk patients can be discharged, while high risk ones should be monitored and treated properly in case of worsening. Moderate risk patients should undergo clinical and instrumental monitoring in SOU, inside the ED. In all these three cases, patients can be subsequently referred to the Syncope Unit for further diagnostic investigations.


Author(s):  
Giuseppe Micieli ◽  
Umberto Aguglia ◽  
Francesca Baschieri ◽  
Giovanna Calandra Buonaura ◽  
Anna Cavallini ◽  
...  

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document