Transient global amnesia frequency plus#

Findings in our two cohorts are substantially consistent: The onset of transient epileptic amnesia occurs at an average age of 62 years, giving rise to amnestic episodes at a frequency of around 1/month, typically lasting 15–30 min and often occurring on waking. We describe the clinical and neuropsychological features in 65 consecutive cases of transient epileptic amnesia referred to our study, comparing these to our previous cohort of 50 patients and to those reported in 102 literature cases described since our 2008 review. However, this highly treatment-responsive condition remains under-recognized and undertreated. Subsequent descriptions have highlighted its association with ‘atypical’ forms of memory disturbance including accelerated long-term forgetting, disproportionate autobiographical amnesia and topographical amnesia. All rights reserved.The term transient epileptic amnesia was coined in 1990 to describe a form of epilepsy causing predominantly amnestic seizures which could be confused with episodes of Transient Global Amnesia. However, simple clinical data and widely available neurophysiological examinations can truly help to effectively distinguish TEA from TGA.Įpileptic amnesia Focal seizure Temporal lobe epilepsy Transient amnesia Transient global amnesia.Ĭopyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. Our findings show that in a real-life clinical scenario, TEA is frequent but often overlooked. In the group with TGA, the only imaging alteration found was diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) hippocampal hyperintensity. Finally, structural abnormalities were more frequent in patients with TEA (26.6%). On the contrary, 24-h EEG showed IEAs in all patients with epilepsy, mostly during sleep, suggesting an essential diagnostic role of long-lasting EEG recording for TEA. The analysis of st-EEG results evidenced low sensitivity for interictal epileptiform abnormalities (IEAs) detection (52.3%), with not conclusive data in distinguishing TEA from TGA. This result could be related with a prolonged postictal state in these patients. In our sample, duration of the episodes did not significantly differ between TGA and TEA, even though it is usually described as shorter for TEA.

Transient global amnesia frequency plus#

001) and atypical symptoms such as confusion or language disorder (TGA plus manifestations), appear to be key elements in order to discriminate between TEA and TGA (80% of patients with TEA vs 7.8% of patients with TGA p <. From a clinical point of view recurrence (p <. Clinical features, neurophysiological, and neuroimaging data were analyzed and compared in the two groups (TEA and TGA).ĭiagnosis of TEA, according to Zeman's criteria, was made in 15 patients (18%). Moreover, patients with borderline epileptiform abnormalities on st-EEG or with normal st-EEG but high clinical suspicion for TEA underwent a 16-channel 24-hour ambulatory EEG (24-h EEG). All patients underwent neurological evaluation, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan, and standard 21-channel scalp electroencephalography (EEG) recording (standard EEG ). We retrospectively collected clinical data of 83 patients who accessed our emergency ward for an abrupt onset of amnesic disorder, initially interpreted as TGA. We designed this study to evaluate the actual frequency of TEA in a real-life scenario and to highlight the features that can help clinicians distinguishing it from TGA. Transient epileptic amnesia (TEA) is an underestimated condition in emergency clinical setting, where most of transient amnesic episodes tend to be classified as transient global amnesia (TGA).