Publications by authors named "Gerard Tao"
The first aim of the Australian Traumatic Brain Injury Initiative (AUS-TBI) encompasses development of a set of measures that comprehensively predict outcomes for people with moderate-severe TBI across Australia. This process engaged diverse stakeholders and information sources across six areas: social, health, and clinical factors; biological markers; treatments; and longer-term outcomes. Here, we report the systematic review of pre-existing health conditions as predictors of outcome for people with moderate-severe TBI.
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- Lennox-Gastaut syndrome (LGS) is a severe form of epilepsy, and new diagnostic criteria have been developed by the International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE) to help identify it more accurately.
- In a study involving 60 patients diagnosed with LGS through video-EEG monitoring, only 48% met the new ILAE diagnostic criteria, indicating that many could have been misdiagnosed under previous standards.
- The findings emphasize the importance of using modern ILAE criteria for more accurate LGS diagnosis, particularly given the different clinical features and outcomes among those who did and did not meet these standards.
Objective: In vitro data prompted U.S Food and Drug Administration warnings that lamotrigine, a common sodium channel modulating anti-seizure medication (NaM-ASM), could increase the risk of sudden death in patients with structural or ischaemic cardiac disease, however, its implications for Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy (SUDEP) are unclear.
Methods: This retrospective, nested case-control study identified 101 sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP) cases and 199 living epilepsy controls from Epilepsy Monitoring Units (EMUs) in Australia and the USA.
Objective: To explore the impact of psychiatric comorbidities on all-cause mortality in adults with epilepsy from a cohort of patients admitted for video-EEG monitoring (VEM) over 2 decades.
Methods: A retrospective medical record audit was conducted on 2,709 adults admitted for VEM and diagnosed with epilepsy at 3 Victorian comprehensive epilepsy programs from 1995 to 2015. A total of 1,805 patients were identified in whom the record of a clinical evaluation by a neuropsychiatrist was available, excluding 27 patients who died of a malignant brain tumor known at the time of VEM admission.
Objective: To investigate the hypothesis that patients diagnosed with psychogenic nonepileptic seizures (PNES) on video-EEG monitoring (VEM) have increased mortality by comparison to the general population.
Methods: This retrospective cohort study included patients evaluated in VEM units of 3 tertiary hospitals in Melbourne, Australia, between January 1, 1995, and December 31, 2015. Diagnosis was based on consensus opinion of experienced epileptologists and neuropsychiatrists at each hospital.