Association of antiepileptic drugs with resolution of epileptiform activity after cardiac arrest.

Introduction: We tested the impact of antiepileptic drug (AED) administration on post-cardiac arrest epileptiform electroencephalographic (EEG) activity.

Methods: We studied an observational cohort of comatose subjects treated at a single academic medical center after cardiac arrest from September 2010 to January 2018. We aggregated the observed EEG patterns into 5 categories: suppressed; discontinuous background with superimposed epileptiform activity; discontinuous background without epileptiform features; continuous background with epileptiform activity; and continuous background without epileptiform activity.