Importance of the Simultaneous ECG During Routine EEG Recording

Objectives: Ictal and interictal ECG abnormalities are not rare in patients with epilepsy. The diagnosis of those arrhythmias using video-EEG monitoring may provide help for prediction of lateralization-localization of epileptic focus and choosing apropriate antiepileptic drugs. The aim of our study was to define arrhythmias during simultaneous routine EEG-ECG recordings and to analyze the effect of these on the management of the patients. Methods: The keywords related to cardiac arrhythmia were searched in all EEG recording reports between January 2011 and February 2012. The demographic features, diagnosis, or pre-diagnosis of patients during routine EEG recordings were obtained from Hospital Data System. We also evaluated the EEG-ECG recordings of patients having arrhythmia and searched for long QT interval. Results: In all 2136 EEG reports, 48 (2%) of them included keywords related to cardiac arrhytmias. There were 25 females included in the study and the mean age of all was 53. Of the 48 patients, 18 had exstrasystole and 14 had tacycardia. Thirteen reports noted no details about the type of arrhythmia, and 3 patients had bloc or bradiarrhythmia. After routine EEG recordings, 6 patients underwent cardiology follow up in our center. One patient with an asystole during EEG recording received cardiac pacemaker inplant. Conclusion: The detection of cardiac arrhythmias is important in diagnosis and follow up of patients who are referred for routine EEG laboratory. Dedicating one channel to ECG recording can only take few minutes even in busy EEG laboratories and make big differences in some patients' management.