Frequency of epilepsy in patients with psychogenic seizures monitored by video-EEG

Abstract

This study examined the frequency of epilepsy in a consecutive series of patients who received a definitive diagnosis of psychogenic nonepileptic seizures (PNES) after completing inpatient video-EEG (VEEG) monitoring. Of the 1,590 patients receiving definitive diagnosis, 514 (32.3%) were diagnosed with PNES. Twenty-nine (5.3%) of these patients were found to have both PNES and epilepsy. When strict diagnostic criteria are applied, there is little overlap between epileptic seizures and PNES among patients referred for VEEG monitoring.