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abnormal 1 hour EEG but normal 6 hour EEG
Mon, 09/18/2017 - 13:37Topic: Parents & Caregivers
My 6 y/o was referred for an EEG because of staring spells from her teacher. Her 1 hour EEG was abnormal with TIRDA and spikes and waves. MRI was normal and a follow up 6 hour EEG was normal. She did not sleep during the 6 hour test and he was not sleep deprived like her 1st EEG. Her neurologist said that the likelihood that this is epilepsy is dramatically reduced and that it "just happens sometimes" that EEGs are abnormal. We are questioning if we should get a second opinion to be sure that there is nothing to worry about or just wait and see how it plays out with the staring into space/potential attention issue. Really happy at the thought of nothing wrong but confused at the same time.
Comments
Staring for super short times
Submitted by Amy Jo on Tue, 2017-09-19 - 00:29
Staring for super short times is usually absence, staring for long periods is more likely to be complex partials but... most people aren't watching and miss the entire episode. Which is how we realized the seizures were probably happening at least a year before someone said anything. One odd instance was easy to blow off, comparing notes brought up there were enough odd things to follow up on. It took 6 months before we got a diagnosis because part of the approach is to eliminate other possibilities. Complex partials never were controlled with medication (seem to have lessened after 4-5 years) but were rare enough to live with. Simple partials got much much worse. We found my child started talking about time in a weird way. The child knows that time is supposed to do X so they try to fit their conversation into a framework that explains their gaps. E.g. X would be the normal end of the day routine and child doesn't recall it all and just says something like 'everything ended very suddenly and I missed the bus.' Because a child doesn't know what is normal - because what they experience is their baseline - they don't know how to compare the difference and they often know what should have happened even if they don't recall it. Adults don't listen very well to kids and kids communicate very differently so it is very very hard to figure out what is going on.I would push for another sleep deprived EEG at minimum.
Thank you for your responses!
Submitted by swmama on Mon, 2017-09-18 - 19:52
Thank you for your responses! Was it very obvious when your son was having his staring spells/seizures? The ped neurologist ruled out absence seizures from the 1st EEG and was concerned with focal partial seizures from the temporal lobe. Everyone is telling me how great this news is and how I'm crazy because I can't stop wondering why the first one was abnormal. I've sent a couple more questions to the neuroligist to hopefully get more answers. For now I think I'm going to continue to keep watching closely and keep track of what I see and ask the teacher to continue to update me. It's hard because the spells are SO fast and we just really don't know what is abnormal vs. what is typical daydreaming/ignoring/potential attention issues.