Wilkins Stacy Schantz, Mesraoua Boulenouar, Palomo Gonzalo Alarcón, Al Hail Hassan, Salam Abdul, Melikyan Gayane, Azar Nabil, Haddad Naim, Uthman Bassim, Siddiqi Maria, Elsheikh Lubna, Ali Musab, Alrabi Abdulraheem, Shuaib Ashfaq, Deleu Dirk, Asadi-Pooya Ali A
Hamad Medical Corporation, PO Box 3050, Doha, Qatar.
Hamad Medical Corporation, PO Box 3050, Doha, Qatar; Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar, PO Box 24144, Education City, Doha, Qatar.
Epilepsy Behav. 2018 Aug;85:218-221. doi: 10.1016/j.yebeh.2018.06.014. Epub 2018 Jul 4.
The Middle Eastern country of Qatar opened its first epilepsy monitoring unit (EMU) in late 2015. This study compared demographic and clinical characteristics of patients with confirmed epilepsy to those of patients with confirmed psychogenic nonepileptic seizures (PNES).
Data were collected via retrospective chart review on 113 patients admitted for evaluation to the Qatar national health system EMU between November 2015 and May 2017.
Seventy-one patients had a confirmed diagnosis (20 had PNES, 46 had epilepsy, 5 had both PNES and epilepsy). Evaluation in 33 patients was inconclusive, and 9 had other medical conditions. Patients with PNES were significantly more likely to be primary Arabic speakers (p = 0.003), and this difference was not explained by education or employment status. The most common referral request in patients with PNES was for recurrent/refractory seizures (p = 0.011), and there was a trend for patients with PNES to have more frequent seizures compared with patients with epilepsy (daily to several per week versus several times a month or less, p = 0.051). Depression was identified in 47% of patients with epilepsy and 65% of patients with PNES, and patients with PNES had higher mean depression scores on the PHQ-9 than patients with epilepsy (p = 0.014). Patients with PNES experienced significantly more fatigue (p = 0.021). Seventy percent of patients with PNES and 50% of patients with epilepsy reported sleep problems.
The characteristics of patients with epilepsy and PNES at the EMU in Qatar were generally similar to those found worldwide. Patients with PNES more often suffered from frequent depression, sleep problems, and fatigue than those with epilepsy, but these were significant concerns for both groups.
中东国家卡塔尔于2015年末开设了首个癫痫监测单元（EMU）。本研究比较了确诊癫痫患者与确诊精神性非癫痫性发作（PNES）患者的人口统计学和临床特征。
通过回顾性病历审查收集了2015年11月至2017年5月期间因评估入住卡塔尔国家卫生系统EMU的113例患者的数据。
71例患者确诊（20例为PNES，46例为癫痫，5例同时患有PNES和癫痫）。33例患者的评估结果不明确，9例有其他医疗状况。PNES患者更有可能以阿拉伯语为母语（p = 0.003），且教育程度或就业状况无法解释这种差异。PNES患者最常见的转诊请求是反复/难治性发作（p = 0.011），与癫痫患者相比，PNES患者有发作更频繁的趋势（每天发作至每周几次，而癫痫患者每月发作几次或更少，p = 0.051）。47%的癫痫患者和65%的PNES患者被诊断出患有抑郁症，PNES患者的PHQ-9平均抑郁评分高于癫痫患者（p = 0.014）。PNES患者明显更容易感到疲劳（p = 0.021）。70%的PNES患者和50%的癫痫患者报告有睡眠问题。
卡塔尔EMU中癫痫患者和PNES患者的特征总体上与全球发现的特征相似。与癫痫患者相比，PNES患者更常患有频繁的抑郁症、睡眠问题和疲劳，但这些对两组患者来说都是重大问题。
