Introduction: Migraine and epilepsy are common chronic neurological disorders presenting with paroxysmal attacks of transient cerebral dysfunction, followed by subsequent return to baseline between episodes. The term "migralepsy" has been proposed to define migraine-triggered epileptic seizures classified by the ICHD-III as a complication of migraine with an aura.
Case: A 55-year-old man with a 30-year history of migraine without aura presented with a new onset left parietal pain accompanied by visual disturbances occurring up to 20 times per day.
Despite appropriate trials of at least two antiepileptic drugs, about a third of patients with epilepsy remain drug resistant (intractable; refractory). Epilepsy surgery offers a potential cure or significant improvement to those with focal onset drug-resistant seizures. Unfortunately, epilepsy surgery is still underutilized which might be in part because of the complexity of presurgical evaluation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCoexistence of 2 idiopathic epilepsy syndromes (ie, childhood absence and Rolandic epilepsy), as evidenced by electroencephalographic (EEG) findings with or without clinical features of the 2 conditions, is uncommon and remains controversial. Few case reports support this coexistence either as a continuum or drug-induced conversion, whereas a large sample case review did not find such co-occurrence. The authors report a case of conversion of typical absence to Rolandic spikes after treatment with ethosuximide.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIctal asystole is a presumably rare but potentially fatal complication of seizures, most often of temporal lobe origin. It is believed that at least some cases of sudden unexplained death in epilepsy (SUDEP) might be triggered by ictal bradycardia or asystole. Current standard practice is to implant a permanent pacemaker in these patients to prevent syncope and/or death.
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