The Visual Evoked Potentials in patients with epileptic and pseudoseizure

Epilepsy is a disease whose incidence is 1% in society, and which may cause sequela and even death with its some complications if not diagnosed right and cured efficiently. Sometimes great difficulties are experienced during the diagnosis and differential diagnosis of epileptic seizures, especially when distinguishing between epileptic seizures and pseudo seizures (non-epileptic psychogenic seizures). In this study, we researched if there are any differences between interictal and postictal periods by examining Visual Evoked Potentials (VEP) in a group of patients with epilepsy and pseudo seizures in their interictal and postictal periods, and also researched the employability of the differences for differential diagnosis of epilepsy and pseudo seizures25 patients suffering from primary generalized epilepsy or partial epilepsy who were selected among those who resorted to the Neurology and Psychiatry Clinic of Fırat University Hospital, 20 patients who don?t have any organic disorders and epileptic seizures but only pseudo seizures due to psychiatric diseases or disorders, and a control group composed of 20 healthy volunteers were involved in this study. In epilepsy and pseudo seizure groups, we conducted a VEP examination in EMG laboratory in postictal (first 6 hours after seizure) and interictal periods (period of minimum 1 week without any seizures). We conducted these measurements once on the control group.In our study, we found that interictal left eye P100 wave latencies of epileptic patients have lengthened statistically significant compared to pseudo seizure interictal group and control group (p<0.05, p<0.01). Also, we found that interictal period right eye N75-P100 amplitudes of epileptic patients were lower compared to interictal period values of patients with pseudo seizures, and this was statistically meaningful (p<0.05). When we compared P100 wave latencies of epilepsy and pseudo seizure groups in interictal and postictal periods, and when we compared N75-P100 amplitudes among them, we couldn?t find any significant differences.Consequently, we reached at the conclusion that VEP examination is not useful for differential diagnosis of epileptic seizures and pseudo seizures.Key Words: Epilepsy, pseudo seizure, VEP, interictal, postictal