administrator, Author at Non Epileptic Seizures - Blog

The stigma of psychogenic non epileptic seizures (PNES) is still with us

The topic for this month’s post came to me after finding a thread of comments made by emergency medical professionals (EMPs) about psychogenic non epileptic seizures (http://www.emtlife.com/showthread.php?p=299085). It was saddening to read how EMPs talked about how they are often berated by hospital staff for bringing in patients with non epileptic seizures. I hope reading […]

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Video EEG monitoring: the “Gold Standard” when diagnosing psychogenic (psychological) non epileptic seizures

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Can someone tell if the difference between a PNES spell and an epileptic seizure (ES) just by looking at the spell itself? Answer: NO What is Video EEG Telemetry and how is it useful to make a PNES diagnosis? Newer technology allows doctors to monitor electrical activity in the patient’s brain during epileptic events. In

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The connection between Psychological (Psychogenic) non epileptic seizures and a history of trauma

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How many people with PNES have a history of trauma? An interesting article was published in the Journal Epilepsy and Behavior ( 2004) by Fiszman et. al. It reviewed 17 PNES studies and found that traumatic events and PTSD in persons with PNES were very common. Depending on the study: 44-100% of PNES patients had

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Psychogenic, pseudo, psychological: why does PNES have so many names?

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Does it matter what we call PNES? In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliette, she said: What’s in a name? that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet… Similarly, as kids we were taught: Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me. What do these two

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Now that you’ve been told you have PNES—What’s the next step?

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Now that you have the right diagnosis, you are finally going to be able to move in the right direction.

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So you’ve been told you have PNES – What’s that?

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You’ve certainly been dealt a real challenge. Why? Because PNES is a very complicated psychological condition that seems to defy logic. There are however some promising treatments. We only need to figure out who they will serve best. In my opinion, the biggest problem lies in that we may be lumping different conditions into one single

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